THE 



LIFE AND LABOUES 



OF 



ALBANY FONBLANQUE 



EDITED BY HIS NEPHEW 



EDWARD BARRINGKTON de FONBLANQUE 



;*.•>* 



\ 




LONDON 
RICHARD BENT LEV AND SON 

|)ublisjjm in #rfoinarg to f)tx Majesty 

1874 



All rights reserved 



H 



TO THE 

MEMBERS OF THE LIBERAL ENGLISH PEESS 

I inscribe tfexs §nrf ^totb d % fife of #n* 

WHO FOUGHT GALLANTLY IN THEIB RANKS 
FOR HALF A CENTURY: 

WHOSE EXERTIONS MATERIALLY CONTRIBUTED TO ADVANCE 
THEIR COMMON CAUSE : 

AND WHOSE CHARACTER REFLECTED HONOUR UPON 
THEIR PROFESSION, 

E. B. de F 



London : 1873. 



ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 



A MEMOIR. 

Albany Fonblanque was one of the many Englishmen of 
mark who trace their descent from a French Huguenot 
family. 

In the little room in Connaught Square which served 
him as a study, there used to hang a framed parchment 
^presenting a genealogical tree dating back five centu- 
ies, surmounted by an elaborately emblazoned coat of 
trms, and embellished in the margin with the quarterings 
)f successive generations of Fonblanques. 

On my once mentioning to my uncle, as an apparent 
inconsistency, that citizens of the United States frequently 
exhibited similar documents in their houses, and that, not- 
withstanding their republican principles, they were prone 
to point, with aristocratic pride, to a long line of ancestors, 
he rejoined that he could see no possible connection be- 
tween a man's political opinions and the interest which it 
was natural and right for him to take in his family history 
and antecedents. If, accordingly, I preface a sketch of 
Albany Fonblanque's life with a brief record of his an- 
cestry, I feel that I am doing what he would not have 
thought unbecoming or inappropriate. 

About the year 1240 two brothers of the historical 
family of the Garnieri of Sienna emigrated to France 
under the pressure of political troubles — one settling in 
Provence, the other in Languedoc, where the descendants 
of each soon acquired considerable landed property and 

B 



2 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FOXIJLAXQUE. 

patents of nobility under the names of Gamier and Gre- 
nier. The last representative of the Provence branch, 
Cesar de Gamier, Marquis de Juliers, died without i 
in 1820, and the English Fonblanqucs are now the sole 
representatives of the other branch of the family. 

The Greniers of Languedoc took a prominent part 
in the early religious struggles of the Eeformation, and 
history makes honourable mention of the Sieur Pierre de 
Grenier, for his gallant defence of the Castle of Cessenan, 
against the Due de Montmorency, in 1584. * His son- 
ceived from Henri IV. the titles of Comte de Haute 
and de Fonblanque, after two fiefs (so-called) which they 
held in the Foret de la Gresine, near Bruniquet ; and the 
king further conferred upon them, according to the then 
prevailing custom of granting commercial privileges to 
the provincial nobility, a monopoly of the profits arising 
from the manufacture of glass (Sieurs de Veneries was 
the title), which the family continued to enjoy for many 
generations. 

After the revocation of the Edict of Xantes in 1685, 
the Greniers suffered much persecution, and one of them 
was tried and executed for having harboured a proscribed 
Huguenot priest. In 1740 the then head of the family. 
Abel de Grenier, Comte de Fonblanqiu . his two 

only sons, Antoine and Jean, to England, there to be 
educated in the Protestant faith, which had bee 
difficult in France. Antoine died without male lie: 

1 See 'Journal de Charbonneau Bfolea : Les Gui I -.' page 7; 

and l Pieces fugitives pour servii a L'histoire de France, par I 
d'Auhois,' vol. ii. page 148. 

He left several daughters, one of whom married the father of the late 
Sir Jamefl Phillips, vicar of Osminton, l>or>ct. who, aa wall aa hia boh, the 

at baronet, took much pain> to ohtais eyidence 
of the Fonblanquei hy personal fiattand search in Lai 

I to them for some of the details I hnve quoted. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 3 

Jean, on the death of his father, realised, as far as he could, 
his possessions in Languedoc, and settling permanently in 
England, where he became nationalized under the name of 
Fonblanque, established a London banking-house. This 
undertaking did not prosper imder his management ; but, 
on his retiring from it, it was successfully carried on by 
his book-keeper, Peter Thellusson, a Swiss by birth, 
who became the founder of the Eenclelsham family and 
of that gigantic fortune which attracted so much public 
attention owing to the circumstances attending its extra- 
ordinary testamentary disposition. 

John Fonblanque married an English woman — Miss 
Bagshawe — and by her had several sons, the only ultimate 
survivor of whom, John Samuel Martin, was the father 
of the subject of this memoir. He was a distinguished 
Equity lawyer, and represented the borough of Camelford 
in Parliament. He was a staunch Liberal, in days when 
Liberalism was not the road to legal or political advance- 
ment ; and, while the heir to the Throne was attached 
to the Whig party, John Fonblanque was an intimate 
and trusted adviser of the young Prince Eegent, whose 
well-known letters to George III., on his exclusion from 
the army, were generally attributed to his pen. He was 
also the author of a standard legal work, a ' Treatise on 
Equity,' which enjoyed the uncommon distinction of 
being more than once quoted as an authority by the 
Bench during the lifetime of the writer. His death, in 
1838, 1 was announced as that of ' the Senior King's 
Counsel and Father of the English Bar ; ' and Lord 
Lyndhurst, in condoling with Albany Fonblanque upon 
this event, said : ' I have known jurists as profound as 

1 Mr. John Fonblanque, in 1823, obtained authority by royal licence to 
re-assume the original name of de Grenier de Fonblanque ; but of his three 
sons only one (the second) availed himself of this sanction. 

b 2 



4 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

your father, but I have known no one who was so perfect 
a master of the philosophy of the law.' 

Albany William Fonblanque, the youngest of three 
sons, 1 was born in London in 1793. At the age of four- 
teen he was sent to Woolwich to prepare for the Eoval 
Engineers, 2 but, shortly after, a dangerous attack of ill: 
compelled him to desist from study for nearly two years. 
On his recovery Chitty, the eminent special pleader, who 
was an intimate friend of his father's, proposed to Albany 
Fonblanque that he should become his pupil, with the 
view to being called to the bar — an offer which he some- 
what reluctantly accepted. In after life he frequently 
referred to the benefits which he had derived from this 
training, and contended that a study of the Law should 
form a branch of every liberal education ; but he never 
took kindly to the profession, and the success which at- 
tended his first attempts at political writing, before he 
was twenty years of age, afforded him a welcome pretext 
for abandoning the legal career, and determined him to 
make journalism the business of his life. 

Journalism in the early part of the present century 
was on a very different footing from that which it has 
now attained ; and it must have required all his confidence 
in the justice of his principles and cause, and in his 
power to express and sustain them, to enable the young 

1 The eldest son, John, after some yew of active military service in the 
wars with France and America, was called to the bar in 1818, and in 1826 
raised to the Bench as ('■ munitioner of \he London Court of Ban kruptc y , 
which office he held up to the date o\ his death in 1863. He - 
thoroughly Bound Lawyer, and was author, conjointly with the late Dr. 
Paris, of a well-known work on ' Medical Jurisprudence.' 

- A letter of his to Mr. John FoTSter, dated duly 1866, in which some of 
the engineering operations in the Crimea are criticised with considerable 
technical knowledge, Conclude* thus: 'Once upon a time when beasts could 

I . I was intended for the Engineers, and then 1 was obliged to study 
Yauban, Cohorn, and Lechat.' 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 5 

writer to make way against the general unpopularity of 
the career lie had chosen, and the social prejudices attaching 
to it. At that time the daily and weekly press had barely 
begun to exercise direct influence upon the conduct of 
public affairs. A statesman might wince under the lash 
of editorial censure, but no degree of newspaper argument 
was likely to affect the policy of Government or to 
modify the action of a Cabinet. The late Lord Lytton 
says, in one of his plays : 

The people, like the air, 
Is never heard save when it speaks in thunder ; 

and half a century ago public opinion had not yet found 
in the Press the means of making itself heard and felt by 
the governing or privileged classes. 

A critic in the ' Edinburgh Review' said apologetically 
for the calling of journalism that c no man need be 
ashamed of a profession of which Albany Fonblanque is a 
member ; ' and Mr. Henry Bulwer (the late Lord Dalling), 
in his work on Franca, contrasts the public recognition of 
eminent political writers in that country with the neglect 
of the same class in England, quoting the Editor of the 
' Examiner' in illustration of his argument. Fonblanque 
himself, however, always deprecated official patronage as 
destructive of the independence of journalism, and was a 
strong advocate for the maintenance of an impersonal 
character by this class of writers, while admitting that this 
was to some extent a bar to social and even to full literary 
recognition. 

But there were other difficulties, besides the then pre- 
valent prejudice against newspaper writers, in the career 
which Albany Fonblanque had chosen. The hired 
literary advocate of political abuses might in those days 
enrich himself ; the reckless and noisy demagogue 
might, on the other hand, be sure of attaining popu- 



G MEMOIR OF ALBANY FOXLLAXQUE. 

larity. The thinking reformer — the philosophical Radical, 
afi he was then called, in contradistinction to those wl 
Eadicalism rested upon abstract principles, and to those 
1 who are Eadicals because they are not lords' 1 — the man 
who would neither cringe to power nor pander to passion 
or ignorance, was certain to incur the enmity of one 
class without receiving the support of the other. 

In 1812, when Albany Fonblanque began his literary 
career, the political and social principles which he advo- 
cated were confined to a small class of educated men. 
The great influential majority of the nation was com- 
posed of a compact body, who from motives of habit, 
conviction, interest, or timidity, were opposed to all fun- 
damental change. As Sydney Smith says : ' Lord Grey 
had not then taken the bearing-reins off the people as Sir 
Francis Head has since taken them off the horses.' On 
the other hand, there was a numerically large body of 
malcontents scattered throughout the country, bent upon 
resistance to unjust or oppressive laws and class legi 
tion, and intent upon the overthrow of obnoxious insti- 
tutions ; but who, in the absence of organisation and 
recognised leaders, were unpractical in their aims and 
often violent in their action. Between the two stood 
the small party which strove to reconstruct rather than 
to demolish; to readjust the balance of the Constitution 
aa the means of its preservation ; to cleanse the 
.-word of State from the rust which corroded it, rather 
than to break the blade. Foremost among tl 

was Albany Fonblanque ; and, while lie used every 
thnato weapon, argument and satire, wit and ridicule, 
and sometimes, as when smarting under a sense of injus- 
tice done to the poor or the defenceless, withering sarcasm 

1 Mr. John Stuart Mill oaei tfci a letter '. Foo- 

Manque. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 7 

and bitter invective, nothing is more conspicuous in his 
writings, composed as these necessarily were in all the 
heat of party warfare extending over half a century, than 
his consistent repudiation of violence in any form — his 
unvarying reliance upon moral force. He had thus the 
twofold duty of leading the attack upon the enemy and 
of restraining the zeal of his followers ; at once to raise 
and to control the storm ; and this duty he performed 
with rare courage, devotion, and self-denial. 1 

In the introduction to his ' England under Seven Ad- 
ministrations/ published in 1837, 2 Albany Fonblanque 
thus reviews the labour of eleven years : — 

' In the settlement of some long-disputed questions and 
the rapid progress of others will be marked the steady 
direction and the increasing strength of popular opinion. 
The Tory party was compact, and apparently unshaken 
in power, even towards the end of the Liverpool adminis- 
tration ; the Test Acts were unrepealed ; the Catholics 
were excluded from the Legislature ; slavery existed in 
our colonies ; the prestige of the perfection of the Law was 
unbroken, and the sanguinary character of the criminal 
code unmitigated ; the corporations were sinks of cor- 
ruption ; a few individuals nominated nearly half the 
members of the House of Commons ; and a Parliamentary 
reformer was in common acceptation another word for a 
visionary.' 

1 ' If I might give a short hint to an impartial writer, it would be to tell 
him his fate. If he resolves to venture on the dangerous precipice of telling 
unbiassed truth, let him proclaim war with mankind — neither to give nor to 
take quarter. If he tells the crimes of great men, they fall upon him with 
the iron hands of the Law ; if he tells them of virtues, when they have any, 
then the mob attacks him with slander. But, if he regards truth, let him 
expect martyrdom on both sides, and then he may go on fearless.' — De Foe. 
This was the motto chosen by Fonblanque after his assuming the direction 
of the ' Examiner,' and to the principle of which he consistently adhered. 

2 A selection from writings in the ( Examiner ' from 1826 to 1836. 



8 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FCXBLANQUE. 

Sydney Smith, in the preface to his ; Essays,' published 
three years later, quotes a similar record of abuses in 
course of reformation in nearly identical words, 1 but l 
further in describing the condition of Liberal thinkers and 
writers too honest to sell themselves to men in power : — 

4 It is always considered as a piece of impertinence in 
England if a man of less than two or three thousand a 
year has any opinions at all upon important subjects ; and 
in addition he was sure at that time to be assailed with 
all the Billingsgate of the French Ee volution : Jacobin, 
Leveller, Atheist, Deist, Socialist, Incendiary, Eegicide — 
such were the gentlest appellations used ; and the man 
who uttered a syllable against the senseless bigotry of 
the two Georges, or hinted at the abominable tyranny 
and persecution exercised upon Catholic Ireland, was 
shunned as unfit for the relations of social life.' 

In the many deep-rooted abuses of the day ; in the 
unconstitutional pretensions of monarchical or oligarchic 
power ; in the stubborn opposition of the dominant el; 
to reform or relaxation of privilege, and in the yet more 
stubborn bigotry of an arrogant Church Establishment, he 
found a fruitful field of labour, and a free and congenial 
exercise for his vigorous pen. Nor was it long before he 
obtained marked distinction as a political writer. He 
was, however, at once too ambitious and too conscientious 
to be spoilt by success ; and in proportion as he became 
popular with the public he became fastidious with his 
work and distrustful of his powers. I have heard him 
say that in his earlier days he had frequently written an 
article ten times over before it contented him, and that 
("sen then he had rarely read it after publication without 

1 I have no intention of attributing: even unconscious plfcgiatiem to the 

witty divine. A retrospect in the Bame field of political and literary labour 
naturally produced the same impressions upon the two mind 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTTE. 9 

having wished to re-write it. His own ideal of political 
thought and composition was infinitely higher than that 
of the public, and his constant effort to attain to that 
standard put an unnecessary strain upon his mental and 
physical powers. In addition to his professional literary 
labours, he felt the necessity of continuing that education 
which his long illness had interrupted, and for many 
years he devoted no less than six hours a day to the 
study of classics and political philosophy, while whatever 
time remained to him for recreation was given to that 
lighter literature which always more or less tinctured his 
writings and his conversation, such as Swift, Fielding, 
Smollett, and the French humourists, in whom he de- 
lighted, and from whom so many of his happy illustrations 
were drawn. His health, always precarious, broke down 
under this severe training, and before he was twenty-one 
years of age he was once more brought to the brink of 
the grave. 

Under the roof of an elder brother, 1 then a captain in 
the 21st Fusiliers, and serving on the staff of the Army 
of Occupation in Belgium, he at this juncture found a 
happy home where, thanks to the tender care of his sister- 
in-law, to whom he was much attached, he gradually re- 
covered sufficient strength to resume his work ; but the 
shadow remained over his spirits, and he gradually fell 
into a state of despondency and melancholy, which left 
their traces upon his character through life. 

His predilection for the society of cultivated women, 

1 Thomas de Grenier de Fonblanque, K.H., who died at Belgrade in 1861 
(while holding the office of British Consul General for Servia), from the 
effects of an attack made upon him by a fanatical Turkish soldier. He had 
married, in 1815, a daughter of the witty Irish politician — afterwards Judge 
of the Admiralty — Sir Jonah Barrington, whose well-known " Sketches of 
my own Times " give so graphic and amusing a picture of society in Ireland 
before the Union. 



10 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FOXBLAXQUE. 

his respect, I might say reverence, for the good and 
gentle of their sex, was with him an almost exagge- 
rated sentiment ; and it was under the influence of such 
feelings, intensified probably at this time by physical suffer- 
ing, that on his return to his lonely London life he thus 
writes to his father : — 

' Your youth was never embittered as mine has been ; 
had it been so, you would know how sweet it is to look 
for solace and support from female friendship. J. has 
been everything to me. That affection which others find 
in sisters I have found a thousandfold in her ; and, should 
an early summons call me from this world, I bequeath 
her to the care of you, and of all those who loved me. I 
am sure I need not say more to a father who, as far as 
permitted him by fortune, has indulged my every wish. 
Do not be alarmed at my writing thus. Seriously, I feel 
easier and more cheerful for having done so.' 

Although he continued a sufferer for many year- — 
indeed, he used to remark that he could not understand 
what people meant by saying that they were 'quite well' 1 
— he resumed his journalistic duties with great vigour, be- 
coming a regular contributor to newspapers and rev ; 
and realising what in those days was considered an 
exceptionally good income for literary work of this 
character. 

In after life Fonblanque was in the habit of representing 
his early career in a veiy dismal light, as a weary round 
of unremitting toil, uneheered by a gleam of pleasure or 
excitement. I am disposed to think that this was a 

1 He often quoted, and once used as nn illustration in one of bis leading 
artk-li a (see p. 186) this compliment paid him by ■ (Wend : ' I nei 
lo iking better nor any other man looking worse; 1 and in a note to Mr. F 
ya, ' How this weather agrees with me you may answer as well 

ran upon this datum: given six drops ofblood in a man's veins, how warm 

will he be with the glass below Zei 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 11 

very overdrawn picture. His practical success in political 
writing, while lie was still a very young man, was such as 
to place him, simple as his habits were, above all anxiety 
or care on pecuniary grounds ; and his private letters of 
that period are far from justifying the gloomy character 
which after the lapse of many years he was wont to attri- 
bute to this portion of his life. Writing to a relation in 
1820, he says :— 

' I have gone more into society lately, fearing lest my 
solitary habits might have an injurious operation on me. 
I write much, and with good effect, but my health does 
not profit by the consequent anxiety. Should I, how- 
ever, continue the same course with equal success a little 
longer, I am the most unfortunate fellow breathing if 
I do not force myself into notice. I have been writing 
the whole day, and my fingers are so cramped that I can 
scarcely hold my pen.' 

A few months later he writes from Brighton : ' You 
may see from the date of my letter that I am recruiting 
against the winter, which is always to me a severe trial. 
I have already been here six weeks, and it is probable 
that I shall stay some time longer, for I find the place 
very pleasant ; and, being in great request, feel satisfied 
with the people. Among other bad habits, acquired 
since I lost my good genius, you must know that I have 
become a whist-player. Indeed, to confess the truth, I 
am addicted to cards in every way. My business here is 
Whist ; if I cannot get Whist — and Providence is very 
good to me, and seldom denies me its rubbers — I resort 
to Piquet ; if Piquet is not to be had, to Ecarte. Do not 
be alarmed at this report. I am not a gambler, and never 
play beyond shilling points (the French game, of course, 
elegantly and Anglice called shorts) if I can help it. Tell 
Tom that the common love of Whist has drawn me and 



12 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLAXQUE. 

old Lady Dudley, our auut's friend, together. She gives 
very nice parties.' 

In another letter of this year he gives an account of 
a love affair, in which he describes his own feelings with 
a curious mixture of sentiment and philosophy : — 

c As I become better acquainted with my divinity, I 
begin to imagine that, however I may now love her, she 
is not suited to make me happy as a wife. I am constitu- 
tionally melancholy, and want, therefore, an animated 
wife. She is as constitutionally melancholy as myself, 
though not deficient in a gentle and very captivating 
archness. My health is about the worst in the world ; 
hers, again, is delicate. My affections are absurdly ardent 
when once excited ; hers (here is the only contrast, and 
a dangerous one it is j temperate and equal, as far as I can 
learn or judge. I have had two rivals in the field with 
me, and she has preferred me to them, but I don't think 
she loves me. She likes my attentions, consults my 
temper, and stands in almost childish awe of me. Before 
I had committed myself to a declaration, I loved her with 
a mad passion. From the moment I took the desperate 
step, reason returned to me, and delusion of all kinds 
was rent away. I am no longer the lover : I am the 
selfish man of the world, searching how every point of 
person and character may bear on my future happi] 
At the same time I have a dee]) affection for her, and 
should be miserable at the thought of causing her a 
moment's uneasiness. Comfort and advise me. Knowing 
the caprices of my own temper, and the 
which it may lead me, there is nothing, short of dis- 
honour, that I would not prefer to an alliance that gave 
me a very young and handsome wife without happin 

1 Tho lady referred to did Dot become hi> wife, but in 1829 be married i 

daughter o( the late Captain Keaue. of Meutli. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTJE. 13 

I send you the " Examiner." Before I tumbled in love I 
was writing in it to my great honour and glory and pro- 
bable profit, but since then I have been good for little. 
Perhaps I shall mend soon.' 

At this time his brother had accepted the appoint- 
ment of Consul for East Prussia, and was living with his 
family at Konigsberg ; and I am tempted to quote a few 
passages from Albany Fonblanque's numerous letters to 
his sister-in-law :— 

' January 22. 

6 Tell me much of the town — of the country — of the 
music, of the men and women, their manners, customs, 
cookery, and other weighty matters. I am prejudiced in 
favour of the town, or rather its people, because they 
patriotically held out against the contagion of French 
manners and morals when these were rapidly corrupting 
the rest of Prussia, and this resistance to ill and seducing 
example is a thing I honour. ..,..' 

1 October, 1822. 

' You have sent me some very good sketches of your 
gigantic habitation. It looks cold, and I cannot picture 
. a pleasant sky hanging over it. I am glad to see, how- 
ever, that trees grow at Konigsberg, and that crows fly 
there. This looks as if nature and nature's tenants had 
not abandoned the spot. The traveller, on seeing a 
gibbet, blessed God that he had arrived in a civilised 
country ; birds are a no less certain sign of fertility. 
They give one to know that something is to be stolen, 
which is a comfort, the feathered tribe being the most 
ancient members of the ancient community of the thieves. 
In despotic countries also, to one of my ways of thinking, 
it must be a delight to follow the flight of a bird ; there 
must be a pleasure in seeing anything take a free course, 



14 MEMOIR OF ALBAXY FOXBLAXQUE. 

and sport above the dominion of the little ill-shaped 
creatures who call themselves the rulers of the universe. 
AYhy dont the birds peck out their eyes ? 

' Your report of the progress made in civilisation, as 
indicated by women and horses sharing equally in con- 
sideration, is by no means flattering, though I have every 
reason to believe it to be strictly correct. Having heard 
that the Germans of that part of the world are a simple- 
hearted, semi-barbarous people, I conjectured that you 
would find the women less advanced than the men. They 
generally are, indeed must be so, where they have not 
established their empire, which backwardness in conquest 
can alone be attributable to an alarming absence of the 
graces. Do not talk to me of ' letters ' — the word is 
formal, and savours of Sir Charles Grandison — but talk 
on paper as much as possible with your absent but 
attached friend.' 

From 1820 to 1830 Albany Fonblanque was succes- 
sively employed upon the staff of the ' Times ' and the 
' Morning Chronicle,' while he at the same time contri- 
buted to the ' Examiner,' to the 4 London Magazine/ and 
to the ' Westminster Keview.' 

A critique written in the latter, in 1S27, upon 
' Moore's Life of Sheridan,' led to his being violently 
attacked in the 'Edinburgh Review,' in a paper called 
' Parliamentary History,' which was generally attributed to 
Mr. Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham. A correspon- 
dence ensued, a part of which I quote, lesfl from any 
interest now attaching to the circumstances than because 
it involves an important question oi' literary morality, 
which to this day is open to dispute ; although I think the 
final decision in this particular i one in the justice 

of which most people will agree. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 15 



6 To Henry Brougham, Esq. 

' October 26, 1827. 

4 Sir, — I am given to understand that you are the 
author of the article " Parliamentary History " in the 
" Edinburgh Eeview," concluding with observations (in a 
note) on a paper in the " Westminster Eeview," and a 
request to the editors to hold the writer of it in suspicion, 
as a person actuated by malignant and interested motives. 
From the allusion to the publication of private letters, it 
is evident that the review of " Moore's Life of Sheridan " 
must be the article referred to. I am the author of that 
paper, and, if you are indeed my asperser, I call upon you 
to avow yourself in that character as frankly as I have 
avowed myself to you in that of the aspersed. Should 
you not be the author of the attack, I have to apologise 
for having thus trespassed on your time and attention. 

6 1 have the honour, &c, 

'Albany Fonblanque.' 

4 To Albany Fonblanque, Esq. 

' Hill Street, Berkeley Square, 
< Friday. 

< Sir, — I have received your letter of yesterday, in 
which you say that you are given to believe that I am the 
author of a note in the " Edinburgh Eeview," reflecting 
upon the publication of private letters in the " West- 
minster Eeview," and calling upon me to acknowledge it 
as frankly as you avow yourself the author of the paper 
in which these letters are published. 

' I must decline altogether answering any such ques- 
tion, and I should think that further reflection will 
convince you that I can give no other reply to your 



10 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUK 

letter, and that no inference is to be drawn from it, except 
my denial of your right to put the question. 

' I have, &c, 

C H. Brougham.' 

Fonblanque, however, refused to admit this plea, and, 
finding his adversary persisting in his right to decline 
avowing or disavowing his responsibility, wrote to the 
effect that the author, whoever he might be, was not a 
man of honour or truth. To this Mr. Brougham rejoined 
that it was evident that it was Fonblanque's wish to pick 
a quarrel with him, by fixing upon him a hypothetical 
affront ; which drew forth the following letter : — 

' Sir, — In reply to your remark that the object of my 
letter was to insult, notwithstanding the qualifying 
expressions, I have again most distinctly to declare that 
the language to which I felt compelled to resort was 
intended to apply only in the event of your being the 
author of the attack on me in the " Edinburgh Review," 
and of your persisting in a refusal to avow yourself hi 
that character. 

' As to the point of your feeling yourself insulted by 
the question whether you were or were not the author of 
the paragraph referred to, I have to say that by the mere 
inquiry I neither did nor could mean an}' offence ; but 
if, notwithstanding this declaration, you feel yourself 
aggrieved, I am of course bound and ready to give you 
the satisfaction you require. 

'I have, &c, 

* Albany Fonblanqu 

According to the custom prevailing in those days, the 

matter was at this point referred to two k friends/ by 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUK 17 

whom a hostile meeting was arranged. At the last 
moment, however, Mr. Brougham's second 1 questioned 
Fonblanque's right to give a challenge to his principal 
upon such grounds ; and after some negotiation this was 
referred for the opinion of a common friend, Lord 
Dudley, whose decision, as expressed in the following 
memorandum, put a stop to further proceedings : — 

' Upon the question, as stated to me, my opinion is, 
that Mr. F. is not entitled to call upon Mr. B. to avow 
whether or not he is the author of a certain paper in the 
" Edinburgh Beview." 

' In order to arrive at this conclusion it is not necessary 
to decide the more general question whether an anony- 
mous attack, upon an individual by name, may be of such 
a nature as to justify the object of it in calling upon the 
supposed author to avow or disavow it ; though, from some 
circumstances which I recollect, I infer that some doubt 
has existed even as to that point. But, when the case is 
like the present, that of an anonymous writer animadvert- 
ing, however severely, upon another, merely with a view to 
what he has written, and without the slightest reference, 
directly or by innuendo, to any particular person, I do not 
think that the party aggrieved can be allowed to individu- 
alize himself, and to call upon whomever his suspicions 
may happen to light upon, to declare whether or not he is 
the man who has transgressed the limits of propriety in 
a controversy with an unknown antagonist. 

' Whether or not the rule which I have ventured to 
suggest will abide the test of any extreme case that might 
be imagined, I have no hesitation in saying, with respect 

1 Mr. Bruce, commonly called ' Lavalette ' Bruce, from the circumstance 
of his having, in concert with Sir R. Wilson, been the means of liberating 
Count Lavalette while under sentence of death in ' the Temple ' Prison in 
Paris in 1815. Fonblanque's second was Mr. Richard Goflj of the Chancery 
Bar. 







18 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 



to this particular instance, that Mr. F.'s character, as a 
man of honour and a gentleman, does not require him to 
insist from Mr. B. upon that disclosure which he at first 
thought it necessary to demand.' — D. 

Writing to a relative some time after this, Fonblanque 
says : — 

1 Tell T. that matters between me and Brougham are 
just as if nothing had happened, and there is not the 
slightest necessity for his being shy of him. Bather the 
reverse ; for all Brougham's friends, who must have had 
his own report of the affair, applaud my part in it in the 
most gratifying terms. Indeed T. Smith, Lord Carring- 
ton's brother, on hearing that I was a candidate for the 
"Athenaeum," volunteered to bring twelve members from 
the House of Commons to vote for me, saying that he 
took a deep interest in me in consequence of that very 
affair. He is the bosom friend of Brougham.' 

At this time Fonblanque was rapidly rising in popular 
favour as a political writer, and applications for contribu- 
tions to newspapers and periodicals poured in upon him 
from various quarters. 

The following letters from Jeremy Bentham and from 
Thomas Campbell, the poet, show the estimate in which 
literary veterans then held the young writer :— 

<D. S. P. December 23, !>•>. 
' My dear Albany, — In all January the "Westminster 
Review" will appear in the character of the giant refreshed, 

so at least the advertisements affirm. 

'In former days it had once or twice the benefit of your 
inimitable prolusions ! Not Long since, if my crazy 

memory does not fail me, on the proposition being re- 
newed to you, you expressed yourself not disinclined to 
accede to it. Should this be the case now, I am your 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 19 

guarantee for payment as soon as the number makes its 
appearance. Subjects left to your choice ; numbers of 
them, one, two, or three. Quantity in the whole for 
which room can be found, from one to two sheets. Ten 
guineas a sheet was the accustomed, and I believe by you 
received, retribution. One of the subjects proposed (not 
by mej is " Justice's Justice," meaning the " unpaids." You 
know, or you do not know, how I worked Peel about 
his paid ditto. You will judge whether anything that 
is there can be introduced or employed in any way to 
advantage. 

' So long ago as June last, when hoping soon to see you, 
I clapped down a few crudities which if concocted by you 
might (I think, and I am not the only man who thinks so) 
be made into a delicious dish. If this happens to suit 
your taste, so much the better ; if not, don't trouble your- 
self to say anything about the matter. 

' The sooner you answer the more you will oblige 

6 Yours most truly, 

' Jeremy Bentham.' 

' Middle Scotland Yard, 

'Whitehall, November 19, 1829. 

' Sir, — From being acquainted with your literary 
character I have for some time been anxious to have the 
honour of forming your personal acquaintance ; but whilst 
you were in London I was prevented by extreme indis- 
position from availing myself of an introduction which I 
might have had to you. Owing to this circumstance I 
still have to crave your indulgence for introducing myself 
to you on paper, in hopes that my name may not be 
wholly unknown to you, and also to solicit a favour from 
you, though I have manifestly no other apology to offer 
than the high value I attach to your literary talents. 

c 2 



20 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

' As a literary man, though you are probably not doomed, 
like me, to make literature a business for life, you will, I 
dare say, be able to sympathise with the anxiety I feel to 
support the periodical I conduct — the " New Monthly 
Magazine " — with the most respectable writers who will 
think me worthy of their assistance. The principles 
which you advocate, and the spirit and ability of your 
writings, would make me think myself exceedingly 
fortunate if I, as an Editor, could obtain the correspond- 
ence of your powerful pen. 

' I am aware that you may have more solicitations of 
this nature than you have leisure or inclination to attend 
to ; but, if my application should seem worthy of your 
notice, I can offer you a sincere assurance, on the part of 
Mr. Colburn as well as myself, that we will use our very 
utmost endeavours to make your correspondence with our 
work in every respect agreeable to your wishes. 

8 It will be unnecessary to trouble you further until it 
may suit your convenience to favour me with an answer. 
Meanwhile 

' I remain, with sincere respect, 

4 Your obedient servant, 

1 Thomas Campbell.' 

Albany Fonblanque seems to have inherited from his 
Huguenot forefathers their love of religious and political 
liberty, and their instinctive antagonism to all dements 
tending to fetter thought or opinion. These feelings had 
been fostered and strengthened by the example and doc- 
trine of his father, and of his father's intimate friend 
Jeremy Bcntham. of whom, as also of James Mill, he 
became an earnest disciple in very early life. 

George Grote was at this time studying in the same 
political school, in which John Stuart Mill too, who was 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 21 

some years their junior, subsequently underwent his 
training. 

Starting from the same point, these three men in time 
came to occupy a prominent position in the Eadical party ; 
but, although there was a perfect agreement in the abstract 
principles upon which their political creed was founded, 
the difference in the order of their minds and natures 
soon created a marked divergence in practice. Fon- 
blanque, though thoroughly in earnest, was never an 
enthusiast. He was of the three the least theoretical, and, 
for that reason perhaps, the most moderate in his views. 
Both Grote and Mill had an overweening admiration for 
a republican form of government, as the highest and 
purest of all political systems, and the one best calculated 
to ensure the true object of good government : the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number. Fonblanque, 
on the contrary, used to maintain that a form of govern- 
ment was the result, and not the cause, of national life, and 
that it mattered little whether the head of the State were 
called King or President while the people were inspired 
with a spirit of freedom and a love of liberty. Grote, 
even at the mature age of fifty-five, had so far retained 
his youthful ardour as to feel elated by the mere fact of 
' living under a republic' when he visited France in 1849 
■ — a sensation which to Fonblanque, whose mind was sin- 
gularly unimpressionable to mere outward forms or names, 
must have been quite incomprehensible. 1 Indeed, it may 
be said that, on this subject, Fonblanque's first start in 
political thought was identical with the stage which 
George Grote attained by slow and painful conviction, 
resulting from the experience of half a century. Grote 
says, in 1869 : 

1 I have outlived my faith in the efficacy of a republican 

1 See ' A Republic without Republicans/ page 392. 



22 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

Government as a check upon the vulgar passions of the 
majority in a nation ; and I recognise the fact that supreme 
power lodged in their hands may be exercised quite as 
mischievously as by a despotic ruler like the first 
Napoleon.' 

Fonblanque, probably, had arrived at a similar conclu- 
sion when, as a boy, he commenced his crusade on behalf 
of popular rights against prerogative and aristocratic pre- 
tension. In their aims the two men had everything in 
common. It was as to the means of attaining their ob- 
ject that they differed ; and the reason might probably 
be found in the fact that, while the political views and 
aspirations of one were tinged with the halo of classical 
lore and ancient tradition, the other was mainly influenced 
by the lights of a work-day-world experience. Gfrote was 
undoubtedly the finer scholar, perhaps the deeper thinker; 
but Fonblanque was, I will venture to sa} T , the better and 
safer political guide. 

The one subject, however, upon which they, and in- 
deed all shades of Eadicals and advanced Whigs, were 
completely agreed at the time, was the determination to 
restore the balance of the Constitution in a popular direc- 
tion by the extension of the franchise ; and hence the 
strongly organised agitation which culminated in the 
Reform Bill of 1832. With that great measure to be 
accomplished, the different sections of the Radical party 
were obliged to join force's, and to merge all differences 
of opinion on minor points; though, as will be seen from 
the letters of John Stuart Mill, he and his followers had 
already, as early as 1829, begun to secede from the more 
extreme Radical section represented by Grote and M< 
worth. 

It was at this juncture that Fonblanque assumed the 

control of the w Examiner ' — a journal destined, under his 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTJE \ 23 

direction, to exercise a powerful influence on the events 
of the stormy political period immediately preceding and 
following the passing of the Eeform Bill. 

The c Examiner' had been established in 1808 by Leigh 
Hunt and his brother, John Hunt, 1 under whose manage- 
ment it soon attracted public attention ; while, in pro- 
portion to the popular support it obtained, it drew upon 
itself the enmity of the Government by its bold and out- 
spoken denunciation of the prevalent political abuses and 
corruption. The law of libel was at that time severe and 
wide reaching, and strictures upon public men or measures, 
such as would now be considered to fall strictly within 
the limits of legitimate criticism, were then punished as 
crimes, with protracted imprisonment and ruinous fines. 

The two Hunts — whose honest zeal did, it must be 
allowed, occasionally outrun their discretion — suffered 
severely from Government persecution. Three unsuc- 
cessful actions were entered against the ' Examiner ' 
within the first three years of its existence ; and in 1812 
a fourth action, for a libel upon the Prince Begent (in 
which Mr. Henry Brougham first distinguished himself 
by the eloquence and vigour of his defence of the Hunts), 
resulted in their being sentenced to a fine of 2,000/. and 
two years' imprisonment. 

It is noteworthy that an offer was made by several lead- 
ing reformers to subscribe the fine, and, singularly enough, 
one of the jury who had joined in the verdict expressed his 
wish, through Mr. Brougham, to pay the whole amount. 
The Hunts however declined such assistance, and also 
refused to entertain a proposition, conveyed to them on 
behalf of the Crown, that they should not be brought up 
for judgment if they would engage to refrain from com- 
ments on the Prince Begent in future. They accordingly 

1 For the character of John Hunt, see Extracts, p. 96. 



24 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

underwent the full term of imprisonment, and continued 
to edit the 'Examiner' from within the walls of Horse- 
monger Lane Gaol — a circumstance which, as may be 
imagined, considerably increased the popularity of the 
writers and the circulation of the paper. 

Although the 'Examiner' professed very advanced Lib- 
eral opinions, it is not to be inferred, from the repeated 
Government prosecutions which it had to meet, that it was 
a seditious or a scurrilous journal. On the contrary; that 
strict adherence to the principles of moral force which I 
have attributed to Albany Fonblanque was shared by the 
brothers Hunt, who, in 1812, incurred much unpopularity 
among the more advanced of their party by their repudi- 
ation of the extreme doctrines of Cobbett and of a name- 
sake, the notorious Henry Hunt, then the democratic 
candidate for the representation of Bristol, whom they 
denounced as an enemy to the cause of liberty, because he 
attempted ' to inflame the passions instead of appealing 
to the reasou of the people.' 

In the journalism of those days there was, however, a 
decree of personality, in the discussion of public men and 
manners, happily unknown at present. It was then the 
practice for the supporters of the Government to address 
persons in power in terms of such fulsome praise as 
could not fail to provoke counteraction on the part of 
their opponents. When a Tory print, for instance, spoke 
of the Prince Eegent as Maecenas, was it surprising 
that the 'Examiner' should object that 'Maecenas had 
never made himself the companion oi' gamblers and 
demireps ? ' Or when, in an adulatory ode, he is addn 
as ' Adonis in thy shape and face,' might it not fairly be 
answered that Adonis was badly used in being compared 
with a red-faced corpulent gentleman of fifty : X : 
remarks such as these were sufficient to form the grounds 



MEMOIB OF ALBANY FONBLANQUF. 25 

of Government prosecution so persistent that it utterly 
exhausted the slender fortune of the two Hunts, and 
finally compelled them to sell their proprietary rights in 
the ' Examiner.' Leigh Hunt, shortly after this, went to 
Italy, where he formed the acquaintance of Lord Byron, 
and lived on terms of intimacy with Shelley. 

More than twenty years after his leaving England, he 
received the following communication from Lord John 
Eussell : — 

' Downing Street, June 22, 1847. 

4 Sir, — I have much pleasure in informing you that 
the Queen has been pleased to direct that, in considera- 
tion of your distinguished literary talents, a pension of 
two hundred pounds yearly should be settled upon you 
from the funds of the Civil List. 

'Allow me to add that the severe treatment you 
formerly received, in times of unjust persecution of 
liberal writers, enhances the satisfaction with which I 
make this announcement. 

' I have the honour to be, Sir, your faithful servant, 

'J. Eussell. 

6 Leigh Hunt, Esq,' 

The ' Examiner ' was subsequently purchased by Dr. 
Fellowes, a gentleman of rare attainments, and a yet 
more rare benevolence, as will be seen from this graceful 
and grateful testimony of Albany Fonblanque on the 
death of his friend in 1847 : — ' 

' It is with no ordinary sorrow that we have to announce 
the death of the Eev. Dr. Eellowes. His long life was one 
unremitting labour of benevolence. The good of his fellow- 
creatures was his constant study, and the powers of his 
mind and the resources of his fortune were constantly 
applied to that object. The Baron Mazeres left Dr 



26 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTHB. 

_i 

Fellowes a large legacy — little short, we believe, of 
£100,000 — which be expended as if held in trust for 
public objects ; and every promising project for extend- 
ing enlightened education, or for serving other important 
social and political interests, was sure of his generous 
support. Extensive as his public benevolence was, it 
did not with Dr. Fellowes, as may be observed in some 
instances, diminish the warmth of his affections in his 
domestic and private circle. There never was a more 
loving father, nor a truer and kinder friend. His nature 
was of that gentle, sweet, indulgent character that Sterne 
would have delighted to illustrate ; and superadded was 
a wisdom which went hand in hand with his benevolence. 
His acquirements were very considerable ; but his mod 
was so great, or rather there was so complete an absence 
of any sort of pretension or desire for display, that the 
extent of his learning was probably unknown to many 
of his associates. He was, in fact, a profound scholar ; and 
his erudition early in life interested Dr. Parr in his favour. 
He was not, however, one of those learned men who 
bury themselves in the lore of antiquity ; he always kept 
up to the knowledge of his time, and could throw himself 
with great effect into its controversies. When Queen 
Caroline was the object of public sympathy, it may be 
remembered that the s^U and tact with which her answers 
to addresses were varied was the subject of much notice : 
they were written by Dr. Fellowes. lie was the author 
of many publications, (me of the last of which was 
"The Religion of the Universe ;" the purpose o\' which 
was to trace the perfections of the Almighty through 
the wonders of Creation. Dr. Fellowes deplored the 
doctrinal mysteries and dogmas, the polemics and sec- 
tarian differences, and thought it desirable and possible 
to unite all denominations in the worship of God through 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUR 27 

the knowledge and admiration of his works. His proposal 
was to make Science the High Priest to Eeligion. 

' Dr. Fellowes's politics were those of an enlightened 
Eadical Reformer : more than Whig but short of Chartist. 
The steady progress of improvement was what he desired ; 
he quarrelled not if it were somewhat slow, so that 
advance was made. The spirit of toleration, which was 
his animating spirit, preached patience in politics as in 
everything else ; and, so that evil was yielding to good, 
he made allowances for difficulties and delays. 

' Latterly his sight failed, and he underwent an opera- 
tion which succeeded for a time ; but darkness fell on 
him again, though without dulling his natural cheerful- 
ness, or disturbing his content and serenity, He sadly felt 
the infirmity which blotted out the recreation and instruc- 
tion of his books, and shut out from him the faces of many 
dear to him ; but he bore it without repining, and drew 
upon memory and reflection, and his large store of good 
and comforting thoughts, for his solace. 

' His last hours were worthy of his life — calm and 
serene ; full of love of the world he was leaving behind, 
full of hope of that to come.' 

For some little time after its transfer the ' Examiner ' 
remained under the direction of Mr. Henry Leigh Hunt, 
a son of John Hunt ; but its circulation gradually fell off, 
until, in 1830, Dr. Fellowes determined to enlist the talent 
of Albany Fonbianque, and to place the journal under his 
absolute control. 

From Dr. Fellowes to Henry Leigh Hunt. 

1 Keigate, September 23, 1830. 

' After much and long anxious and bewildering deliber- 
ation, I have finally determined, as soon as the requisite 
arrangements will permit, to submit the sole and exclu- 



28 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

sive control over the paper to Mr. Fonblanque, who has 
at the same time kindly consented to act as trustee. . . . 
Mr. Fonblanque will not only have the supreme political 
control over the paper, but power to appoint whom he 
pleases to undertake the subordinate management. I do 
not suppose there is any more mystery in the practical 
part of the management of a paper than what any man 
of plain common sense may master, and Fonblanque will 
furnish the intellectual in as large a quantity as the 
avidity of John Bull for that article can desire, or his 
moral stomach digest.' 

Writing to Albany Fonblanque five years later, on a 
subject of finance connected with the paper, Dr. Fellowes 
says : — 

' I shall not be found willing to do an act of unkind- 
ness to any individual, and particularly to one who has 
made such long, strenuous, highminded, and glorious 
efforts to put down the selfish oligarchy by which this 
country is still enthralled, as you have done. Take, 
therefore, my dear Sir, a constant and affectionate care of 
honest, worthy, and patriotic John Hunt, and other tilings 
need not give you an anxious thought.' 

In a subsequent letter, without date, he writes : — 

' Permit me to embrace this opportunity of thanking 
you for the delight as well as instruction which I have 
derived from the brilliant wit and cogent reasoning which 
you have displayed in your political lucubrations. They 
have never been excelled by any writer of the present 
age, or indeed of any age. Made virtute, and 

4 Believe me, 

' Yours truly, 

*- Robert Fellowes. 1 

Leigh Hunt's opinion was not less flattering. In reference 
to his past connection with the ' Examiner,' he writes : — 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 29 

' Some years afterwards I had an editorial successor, 
Mr. Fonblanque, who had all the wit for which I toiled, 
without making any pretension to it. He was, indeed, 
the genuine successor, not of me, but of the Swifts and 
Addisons themselves ; profuse of wit, even beyond them, 
and superior in political knowledge.' 

About the same time that Fonblanque assumed the 
direction of the ' Examiner,' John Stuart Mill became 
editor of the ' London Keview,' a journal professing to be 
the organ of the ' philosophical Badicals ;' and in 1831 he 
writes to Fonblanque : — 

' What I want to talk to you about is the critical state 
of public affairs, and to mingle counsels on the great 
question of the Facienda. I am persuaded that every- 
thing depends upon the attitude of the people. Their 
enemies will give up nothing but in the fear of worse 
following. That we may lay down as a certain position. 
Well then, how is that attitude to be secured ? The 
difficulties are very great. The people, to be in the best 
state, should appear to be ready and impatient to break 
out into outrage, without actually breaking out. The 
Press, which is our only instrument, has at this moment 
the most delicate and the most exalted functions to dis- 
charge that any power has yet had to perform in this 
country. It has at once to raise the waves and to calm 
them ; to say, like the Lord, " Hitherto shalt thou go, and 
no further." With such words ringing in their ears, 
Ministers cannot waver if they would ; and I think you 
have begun to distrust them, or at least to express your 
distrust, too soon. We should do everything we can to 
prevent even the appearance of the Cabinet not being 
with us ; and I believe they are heartily in earnest w T ith 
the Bill, that is, as far as Schedule A and B and the 10/. 
qualification. 



80 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

' With these conditions, I am easy about the rest ; and, if 
there are certain things which will enable certain lords to 
say " Ah ! the Bill is now endurable," I know no objec- 
tion. Given A and B and the qualification, and I say it is 
the Bill. The Parliament will meet, if not on the day to 
which it is prorogued, certainly on 1st December ; that I 
believe on good authority. We must therefore hold the 
language of assurance, tell the Lords that they will have 
but a short respite, and that the King (let us not forget 
him) and the people will not be disappointed ! I am 
terrified at the idea of any collapse in the public mind — 
that there should be any mark of despondency. This 
would give heart, and along with it strength, to our bitter 
enemies, and this would be a sure effect of the opinion 
that we are abandoned by the Ministers.' 

After the passing of the Eeform Bill, however, serious 
differences began to revive in the Radical camp. Vote 
by ballot, which to Mill and Grote and their following 
appeared indispensable to the successful working of the 
enlarged franchise, was not considered of equal import- 
ance by others of the party ; and Mill, in a private letter 
to Fonblanque, complains bitterly of the apathy of some 
sections of the Radical party. 

4 Unless,' he says, ' you and a few others bestir your- 
selves, and give the word to the people to meet and petition 
for the ballot during the next three weeks, I 
motion will go off flatly as it did last year, and if so the 
consequences will be unexpectedly mischievous .... 
It is enough to drive one mad to s< e everybody do every- 
thing except the precise thing which is of importance at 
the lime, and every opportunity lost. . . . 

1 1 wrote to Place, 1 tosee if the committee who managed 

1 A prominent Liberal politician, well known at tbe time as the ' Kadical 
tailor of Charing Oro 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUF. 31 

all the correspondence and petitioning on the Newspaper 
Stamps for two sessions, and only spent £110, would do 
the same for the ballot. He answered that even this £110 
they had not been able to raise, and were £20 out of 
pocket. I have subscribed both years, that is £2, which 
was in proportion to my means, but I could not help 
sending him £5 for my share of the loss. In answer, I 
received the enclosed, which I will keep as a memorial of 
the spiritless, heartless imbecility of the English Eadi- 
cals 

' I shall be surprised if, after reading this, you still think 
that it was not worth while risking something, in order to 
awaken the people from their torpor? 

In 1838 these differences appear to have become more 
serious ; and we find Fonblanque reproaching Mill with 
identifying himself with the ' Grote conclave ' and the 
■ philosophical Eadicals,' and Mill, in defending himself 
against the charge, repudiating the doctrines of Grote and 
his coterie, as ' persons whom I have nothing to do with, 
and to whose opinions you are far more nearly allied 
than I am. . . . There may be such a conclave, but I 
know nothing of it, for I have never been within the door 
of Grote's house in Eccleston Street, and have been for 
the last few years completely estranged from that house- 
hold. . . . Immediately after Lord J. Eussell's declara- 
tion I tried to rouse them, and went to a meeting of most 
of the leading parliamentary Eadicals at Molesworth's, 
from which I came away, they thinking me, I fancy, 
almost mad, and I thinking them craven. I do not except 
Grote, or Warburton, or Hume, all of whom were there. 
I except none but Molesworth and Leader, two raw boys ; 
and I assure you, when I told them what I thought 
should be done by men of spirit and real practicalness of 
character, I had perfect ground for feeling well assured 
that they would not do it.' 



82 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

And again : ' What is the meaning of your insisting upon 
identifying me with Grote and Roebuck and the rest? Do 
you in your conscience think that my opinions are at all 
like theirs ? Have you forgotten what I am ? how you once 
knew that my opinion of their philosophy is, and has for 
years been, more unfavourable by far than your own, 
and that my Radicalism is of a school the most remote 
from theirs at all points which exists ? They knew this 
as long ago as 1829, since which time the variance has 
been growing wider and wider. ... In the face of this 
it is rather hard to be accused of ascribing all wisdom and 
infallibility to a set from whose opinions I differ more than 
from the Tories/ 

In 1 841, however, Mill writes to Fonblanque : ' I believe 
there is nothing of any importance in practical politics in 
which we now differ, for I am quite as warm a supporter of 
the present Government as you are. Except Lord Palmer- 
ston's Syrian folly, I have seen nothing in their conduct, 
since the last remodelling of the Ministry, two years ago, 
but what is highly meritorious ; and now, after this last 
great act, a Radical, unless he be a Chartist, must be 
worse than mad if he does not go all lengths with them ; 
for men who are capable of doing what they have done on 
this occasion, and of supporting it moreover by speeches 
showing so thorough a knowledge of the principles of the 
subject, will certainly bring forward any other great im- 
provements which the time is, or becomes, ripe for. The 
moderate Radical party and moderate Radical Ministry 
which I so much wished for, and of which I had hoped that 
Lord Durham would have made himself the leader, were 
merely a parly and a Ministry to do such things as these 
are doing, and in the same maimer. Thev have conformed 
to my programme; they have come up to my terms; and 
so it is no wonder that I am heart and soul with them/ 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 33 

It was about this time that Grote, in a letter quoted in 
the interesting memoir recently published by his widow, 
complains so bitterly of ' the degeneracy of the Liberal 
party and their passive acquiescence in everything good 
or bad which emanates from the present Ministry ; ' and 
asks why he should waste his time and powers in ' sus- 
taining Whig- Conservatism against Tory-Conservatism,' 
though men like Fonblanque and Mill must have been 
surprised at finding themselves accused of Conservative, 
or even Whig, proclivities ! 

Fonblanque was certainly the last man who could be 
fairly charged with subserviency to any Government, or, 
indeed, with allegiance to any set of statesmen. He had 
certain objects at heart, and while Ministers worked in 
that direction he gave them his cordial support ; but the 
' Examiner' never made itself the organ of a Cabinet, and, 
although holding views much in advance of those pro- 
fessed by the great majority of the Liberal statesmen of 
the period, was ever foremost in repressing and denouncing 
anything that bordered upon violent, subversive, or revo- 
lutionary doctrines. 1 

Sir Denis Le Marchant, writing to Fonblanque from 
Scotland, says : — 

4 1 have been living for two days in the society of a 
most sensible and excellent person, who knows much of 
the opinions of the operatives in the populous parts of 
Scotland, and who attaches great value to the good in- 
fluence of the " Examiner." The people in his district, 
as he tells me, take quantities of papers, good and bad, 
and he alone took the " Examiner." He lent it to his 
neighbours, and he soon found that it was sought for and 

1 Striking examples of this will be found in Fonblanque's treatment of 
the Chartists, and more especially in an article upon the Great Chartist 
Demonstration of 1848. Vide Extracts, p. 216. 

D 



34 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

read with the very greatest avidity. He thinks also that 
it is mainly owing to the influence of that paper that the 
people in his district refused to hear Eoebuck at Glasgow, 
or to attend the Eadical demonstrations. This shows 
that the tone of the " Examiner" is judicious, and suited 
to the people.' .... 

4 There is one thing,' writes Lord Durham in 1836, 
' which I admire even more than your rare wit, your 
irresistible humour and fine scholarship, and that is the 
thorough healthiness of your political views.' 

' Healthiness ' is indeed the most appropriate word to 
express the tone of Fonblanque's political writings, which 
were singularly free from anything morbid, strained, or 
sensational, and all the more vigorous because of their 
moderation. In describing Lord Durham's politics 1 he 
unconsciously depicted himself : 4 He was not a reformer of 
the Eepublican class . . . but he occupied, as it were, the 
frontier line of Constitutional Eeform.' 

The maintenance of the Constitution in its integrity 
was with Fonblanque ever the first consideration, because 
he believed it to afford the best security for public liberty. 
On the accession of the present Sovereign the Throne had 
no warmer champion than Albany Fonblanque ; and he 
was as ready to defend it against the violence of the 
Chartists as against the insults of certain of the Tory 
party.' 2 The position of a young Queen would in itself 
have appealed to the loyal feelings of a chivalrous nature 
like his; but it was Her Majesty's strict adherence to 
Constitutional principles which enlisted his reasoning 
powers in behalf of the Sovereign, and prompted him to 
the defence of the Throne against all enemies, whether 
aristocratic or republican. His was indeed that soundest 
form of loyalty which, to quote his own words, is ' not 

1 See ' liio<rrnphical Sketches/ pnije Bl. 
■ See 'Tory Disloyalty,' paire 140. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 35 

merely a matter of traditional sentiment, but of reasoned 
preference and settled judgment/ 1 Fonblanque resented 
being classed among the ' philosophical Eadicals ; ' he 
might more appropriately be described as a 'Constitu- 
tional Eadical.' 

Political knowledge was up to twenty years ago "heavily 
taxed by the Stamp Duty upon newspapers, and the high 
price of the ' Examiner' materially limited its circulation 
among the poorer classes. In order to bring it more 
within their reach, it was suggested that the cost of its 
production might be reduced by the use of machinery in 
printing ; but, as this arrangement involved a considerable 
immediate outlay, a number of Albany Fonblanque 's 
friends and supporters proposed to provide the necessary 
funds by payment of their subscriptions ten years in 
advance. 2 

Foremost and active among these was Mr. Edward 
Bulwer (afterwards Lord Lytton), who writes : — 

' My dear Friend, — Ten years of the " Examiner " en- 
sured and safe is a delight few people can resist — even the 
bats and owls themselves, I should think ! 

' The highest compliment to your honesty is that it is 
uphill work to sell. If you would only pander to the mob, 
whether geotle or simple, you would be read by all the 
world. As it is, you must be contented for a short time 
longer with the fame more universally acknowledged than 
that of any political writer in England except Swift, and 
him you beat in wisdom, consistency, and principle. 
' Affectionately yours, 

' E. L. B.' 



1 See ' The Duke of Wellington,' page 108. 



2 This arrangement resulted in a large and rapid increase in the circulation 
of the ' Examiner/ which was steadily maintained during the following twenty 
years. 

D 2 



36 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTJE. 

From Mr. Disraeli. 

* Bradenham House, Wycombe, Bucks, 
'March 16, 1834. 

' Sir, — I only learnt within these few days from our 
mutual friend, Mr. Bulwer, that there w T as a mode, 
through the co-operation of your friends and admirers, of 
rendering by some mechanical arrangements your journal 
more effective. 

' I am sure at the present day even talent distinguished 
as yours must struggle in vain against machinery — a power 
which it is as well certainly to have on our side. 

' I believe that I am the last person who ought to bear 
witness to the candour or the justice of your strictures ; 
but I am very willing also to believe that my case is the 
•exception that proves the rule of your impartiality. I 
hope therefore you will permit me to inscribe my name 
in the list of the acceders to your proposition. My friend 
Mr. Clay, at present on a visit to us here, begs me on 
his behalf to express the same claim. 

6 Believe me, Sir, with great respect, 

1 Your obedient Servant, 

'Benjamin Disraeli.' 

From Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Clay, M.P. 

1 Fulwell Lodge, Twickenham. 

' Mr. W. Clay avails himself of this opportunity to bear 
testimony to the noble spirit of independence and the dis- 
tinguished ability with which the "Examiner" is con- 
ducted. It may have failed in obtaining that popular 
support which in the present state of the public intel- 
ligence no writer must perhaps expect who will not 
encage in the defence of profitable abuses on the one 
I land, or Hatter the prejudices and inflame the passions 
of the ignorant on the other; but Mr. Clay trusts that 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 37 



the time may yet arrive when the Editor of the 
" Examiner" shall be as widely acknowledged as he 
justly deserves, to rank amongst the very foremost of 
those whose labours have tended to make truth prevalent, 
have furthered the sacred cause of equal rights, of govern- 
ment for the good of all, and promoted consequently, in 
the highest degree, the happiness of mankind.' 

A perusal of the foregoing letters affords a curious 
illustration of the change which political opinion is apt to 
undergo. Here we find the future leader of the Con- 
servative party, and one who subsequently became a 
prominent member of his Cabinet, going out of their way 
to support a Eadical newspaper ; while to the influence 
of that very paper is attributed opposition, on the part of 
Liberal Scotch operatives, to the revolutionary doctrines 
of Mr. Roebuck, then the democratic member for Sheffield, 
and now a convert to Toryism. Albany Fonblanque him- 
self, however, never changed or swerved. The principles 
which he professed in early youth he maintained to the 
last day of his life ; and he lived long enough to see not 
only the triumph of his cause, but the accomplishment of 
almost every reform, whether political or social, for which 
he had toiled with all the strength of his fine intellect and 
honest convictions. 

It would not be fair, however, to claim for its Editor 
only the credit of the success of the ' Examiner ; ' for 
among those who contributed to it we find the names of 
men foremost in the literature and politics of the day. 
For many years Mr. John Forster, who succeeded to the 
editorship in 1847, had acted as literary editor; and, 
although the wide popularity of his more permanent and 
solid works has eclipsed the fame of his critical essays on 
books and the drama, those who remember the 'Examiner' 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 



in its palmiest days cannot have forgotten how eagerly 
authors and actors awaited its verdict upon their merits, 
and how confidently this was accepted by the public. 
Among the contributors were Thackeray, Marmion Savage, 
Professor Henry Morley, John Crawford, Eyre Evans 
Crowe, John Stuart Mill, Walter Savage Landor, Charles 
Buller, Monckton Milnes, Charles Dickens, 1 Mrs. Norton, 
and many others, whose talents helped to establish the 
reputation of the ' Examiner ' as a leading and attractive 
organ of politics, literature, and the fine arts. 

In an eloquent tribute to Albany Fonblanque which ap- 
peared in the * Scotsman ' after his death, it is remarked : — 

' Who that remembers the " Examiner " in the days of 
Canning, of Grey, and of Melbourne, can ever forget the 
purely literary delight with which that journal was read ; 
or, if a political Liberal, fail to acknowledge, the more 
fully he tries to analyse and trace back the sources of his 
political thoughts and principles, that there he found his 
chief master and teacher. In the excited political times 
from 1830 for a few years onwards, an epigram, an illus- 
tration, a witticism in the " Examiner M — and there were 
often a dozen, more or less admirable, in one short article — 
went off like a great gun, echoing all over the country." 

This writer fully confirms, and evidently from personal 
knowledge, what I have said with regard to the infinite 
pains Fonblanque took to perfect his work : — 

' He expended himself much in phrase, polishing and 
hardening with much and often obvious labour. Very 
little of that sort of work is within the power of any man. 

1 Mr. Reynell, who has printed the ' Examiner ' from its commencement 
to the present day, writes to me : — 

1 Charles Dickens occasionally wrote an article for his friend, and I 
remember on one occasion seeing him at the printing-office desk, on a hot 
Friday night in summer, energetically working away with coat oil' and shirt 
sleeves tucked up.' 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTJE. 39 

He had strength, but not length ; he spent his strength in 
running after brevity. 1 He had no " rush ; " it was rather 
a series of brilliant leaps which told severely on the wind. 
He could do excellently well, but he could not do much. 
When the " Morning Chronicle " was edited by the honest, 
sagacious, learned, but not sprightly John Black, and it 
was desired to infuse a more lively element, Fonblanque 
was offered what then seemed an almost fabulous sum for 
two contributions a week, but he found that this addition 
to his labours was too much for him ; he confessed in- 
ability, and withdrew. He was too good a workman not 
to be ashamed of bad work.' 

Applications for literary contributions continued to 
come to Fonblanque from many quarters. 

In 1834 John Stuart Mill writes : ' Will you allow me 
to remind you of our hopes of an article from you for the 
first number, 2 and to say that I am ready to work for 
the " Examiner " to any extent that would be needful 
while you are about it ? We have promises of support 
(as writers) from my father, Grote, John Austin, Burley of 
Sheffield, Peacock, Fox, James Martineau of Liverpool, 
Kichol of Montrose, Cornewall Lewis, Buller, Eoebuck, 
Wilson, Strutt, Mrs. Austin ; everybody, in short, whom 
we thought worth asking, except Bulwer, and he has almost 
promised. But without you we should be weak in some 
very important departments, and there would not be 
sufficient relief to our heaviness and dulness.' 

In the following year he writes : — 

' As the sole Eadical review, we shall surely now have 
a good chance of success, but we have more need than 

1 In his earlier days he once apologized for the length of an article on the 
ground that he ' had not had time to make it shorter.' 

2 In this year Sir William Molesworth purchased the ' Westminster Re* 
view,' which was then merged in the ' London Review.' 






40 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

ever of good articles. Had you been able to write for 
us from the commencement, it might have made a great 
difference to us. There are few of the good Eadical 
writers who have not helped us ; but you, who for popular 
purposes are the best, have not. I wish you would.' 

Four years later Mr. Edward Bulwer writes : — 

4 Can you conveniently give us four pages of short 
notes of the month, in your inimitable way, upon manners, 
books, politics, or anything (we have rather too much 
politics already) ? It would be the making of our first 
number. 1 I have hitherto felt reluctant to ask the favour, 
but necessity has neither law nor delicacy. We must 
have it by Sunday. I need not add that you have carte 
blanche as to terms.' 

Partly from his determination to undertake no more 
than he felt confident of achieving with credit, partly 
from a growing dislike to the act of ' writing to time/ 
but mainly I think from bodily weakness and continual 
suffering, Fonblanque declined most of these proposals, and 
limited his labours to the ' Examiner.' To write one or two 
leading articles once a week does not certainly appear to 
involve any great mental or physical strain ; yet. when — 
as for many successive years he was in the habit of doing 
— he took his two or three months' yachting in the 
autumn, no small part of his intense boyish enjoyment of 
his holiday was derived from the feeling that he was 
under no obligation to write upon current topics by a 
given day. 2 

What he did write, however, was, as in earlier days, 
prepared with infinite pains and labour ; and he would 

1 The 'Monthly Chronicle,' ft Review started by Pr. Lardner. 

2 Yachting -was Fonblanque's favourite recreation : nor was he a mere 
amateur sailor. His frequent writings upon nautical and naval questions 
.-how how thoroughly he had studied the science and practice of navigation. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 41 

spare himself no trouble to secure the utmost accuracy 
even in the most trifling matters of reference. Thus, 
before using an illustration or quotation of the origin of 
which he was not quite sure, he would make a point of 
verifying it, never trusting to his own memory while other 
means of information could be obtained. He frequently 
made use of stories told by Count d'Orsay, who had 
an inexhaustible stock of anecdotes, which he used to 
relate in a manner irresistibly droll. 1 But Fonblanque 
would, as a rule, before quoting them, ask for the original 
story in writing ; and I have found a number of replies 
from Count d'Orsay to such applications in the form of 
these anecdotes. One of them I am tempted to give in 
extenso : — 

8 My dear Fonblanque, here it is. Mehemet Ali de- 
manda k un Francais de lui expliquer ce qui c'etait 
qu'une republique. " Si l'Egypte etait une republique," 
lui dit-il, " vous seriez le peuple et le peuple serait le 
Pacha." Mehemet lui repondit qu'il ne se trouvait aucun 
gout, aucune sympathie, pour une republique. 

4 Yours affectionately, 

'd'Oksay.' 

Albany Fonblanque had long wielded, through the 
' Examiner,' too formidable a weapon not to make it an 

Writing to Mr. Forster in 1856, he says : ' I have always had an ambitious 
day-dream that I should come to fifteen shillings a week in an oyster-smack 
with my keep, which preferment I would be unwilling to lose by any hiding 
of my sea-lights under a bushel.' 

1 Count d'Orsay's name, if remembered at all by the present generation, 
is preserved as that of a handsome well-dressed man of fashion ; but he had 
far higher claims to public notice. I had the good fortune to meet him 
frequently in my boyhood, and cannot forget the irresistible charm of his 
manner, his ready genial wit, his numerous accomplishments as artist, musi- 
cian, and author, and his unfailing goodness of heart and wide-reaching 
humanity. 



42 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

object with the leading Liberal statesmen of his time to 
conciliate his good will ; but that delicate sense of truth 
and justice, which in early life deterred him from assum- 
ing the functions of an advocate, irrespectively of the 
cause to be promoted, rendered him unreliable, to men in 
power, as a journalist. His political bias was strong, 
founded, as it was, upon early training, deep-rooted con- 
viction, and the exercise of every reasoning faculty he 
possessed ; but he was too earnest in his principles to pin 
his faith blindly upon statesmen, or to follow them into the 
intricacies of political tactics. Perhaps, owing to his inex- 
perience of official life, he made too little allowance for the 
difficulties and responsibilities of statesmen who had to con- 
ciliate many interests, while he considered only one object : 
the promotion of those reforms' which he believed to be 
indispensable to good government and national prosperity. 
He accordingly felt that, to preserve his complete inde- 
pendence and impartiality, and to remain unfettered in the 
expression of his opinions, was the position which gave 
him his true strength ; and that, in order to maintain that 
position, he must be prepared to sacrifice, not only all con- 
siderations of interest, but even the ties of personal friend- 
ship, when these became, incompatible with perfect inde- 
pendence. Upon this principle he acted consistently ; and 
when, in 1845, a contemporary accused him of showing 
undue leniency to the party in power, and attributed this 
to his being under obligations to the leading statesmen, 
it was with a good conscience that lie was enabled to 
meet this charge in the columns of the 4 Examiner' in the 
simple but emphatic words of truth : — 

'The statement that we are under obligations to the 
Whig party leaders, ami to Lord Palmerston especially, 
is utterly false. The conductor o( this paper has never 
compromised his independence by asking a favour of any 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 43 

member of this or any other Government. The Whig 
leaders alluded to, and " Lord Palmerston in particular," 
know the falseness of the statement ; and the course 
which their sense of honour, truth, and justice should 
prescribe, is a plain one.' 

When, some years later, he felt bound to condemn 
Lord Palmerston's policy, he thus, in a private note to 
Mr. Forster, describes how much it had cost him to take 
this course towards one for whom he entertained a sincere 
regard, and whose political opinions on most points he 
fully shared : — 

6 I never wrote with so much repugnance as on that 
Palmerston subject. He will say of me as De Eetz did of 
Kichelieu : " He sounded my praises with incredible 
bitterness," but it is not true ; and, had it been a brother, 
I could hardly have come to my conclusion with more 
distress and reluctance. My only comfort is the assurance 
that it is right.' 

In the same spirit of impartial justice he writes to Mr. 
Forster, after the death of Lord Melbourne, with whom 
he had lived on terms of personal friendship : — 

' I have my hands full of Lord M.'s character, about 
which I am the more anxious from the cruel disparage- 
ment on one hand and the indiscriminating laudations on 
the other.' 

The eloquent tribute paid to the memory of the dead 
statesman in the ' Examiner' 1 is full of feeling and tender- 
ness ; but mark with how steady and even a hand he 
holds the scales of justice in estimating the character of 
a personal friend and political ally. 

It is not surprising that, in his determination to remain 
impartial, he should sometimes have given offence to 
those who, considering him to belong to their party, 

1 See Extract?, p. 85. 



44 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE- 

found their political conduct assailed by him ; yet so 
thorough was the belief in his honesty that I doubt 
whether his strictures, severe as they sometimes were, and 
all the more so when directed against friends and parti- 
sans, ever caused personal estrangement. John Stuart 
Mill, after justifying himself in a private letter against a 
reproach in the ' Examiner,' says : ' I hope I need not 
repeat my conviction that in this, as in all other parts of 
your conduct, yon act with the most perfect persuasion 
of your being in the right ; ' and phrases almost identical 
occur in letters of the same nature from other persons 
similarly circumstanced. 

Lord Lytton, after he had abandoned the Liberal party, 
writes to him : — ' A thousand thanks to you, my dear 
Fonblanque, for your kind note. It is a deep gratification 
to me to think that party or political differences have 
not lost me your friendship ; ' and I remember my 
uncle telling me, not long before his death, what high 
gratification it had afforded him to be told by a promi- 
nent statesman, whose policy he had habitually opposed, 
that he ' bore him no ill-will ; for, although he had hit 
him very hard, he had never dealt a foul blow.' In a 
letter to Mr. Forster, also, he dwells with pardonable pride 
upon 'the remarkable fact that for thirty years and more 
the " Examiner " has never appeared in a court of law, to 
meet even the charge of libel.' 

It is to the honour of the Liberal statesmen of the day 
that I record their lively appreciation of the services 
rendered to their cause by Albany Fonblanque. as evinced 
not only by many an act of personal consideration, but 
by repeated tenders of public office. Among other ap- 
pointments offered to him was the Governorship of Nova 
Scotia, at a period when our North American Colonies 
were undergoing those changes' in their political system 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 45 

which he had always advocated, and which have now esta- 
blished colonial self-government without, in any respect, 
loosening the ties that bind them to the Mother-country. 
To assist in forwarding this policy would have been a 
labour of love to him ; but he could not determine upon 
so completely breaking through all the habits of his life, 
and was most reluctant to disconnect himself from the 
conduct of a journal with which his name had come to 
be so thoroughly identified. He accordingly declined 
this and other offers. In 1847, however, domestic 
reasons induced him to accept the post of Statistical 
Secretary to the Board of Trade (then vacant by the 
death of Mr. Porter), which Lord John Eussell tendered 
to him in very graceful and gratifying terms, and with 
the express stipulation that his assumption of public 
office should not fetter him in the expression of his poli- 
tical views. As a matter of course, however, it involved 
the resignation of his editorship of the ' Examiner/ 
which he accordingly transferred to Mr. Forster ; though, 
as will be seen by the dates of the Extracts, he long con- 
tinued to contribute to the paper. 

Some years later, and when his direct influence over 
the ' Examiner ' had completely ceased, the same states- 
man showed him another act of kind consideration, which 
Fonblanque thus mentions in a letter to Mr. Forster : — 

' By the way he (Lord J. Eussell) has done a kind 
thing by me in the kindest way. He has spontaneously 
asked Graham for a clerkship in the Admiralty for 
Bentham, 1 and Graham has given it as handsomely as 
Lord John asked it.' 

1 One of his sons, since deceased, upon the occasion of whose christening, 
in 1830, Lord Melbourne wrote to Fonblanque : — 

'Why do you not call him Jeremy, instead of Bentham only, which 
would mark your meaning more clearly ; or is there something in the sound 
of Jeremy that would frighten Mrs. F, ? ' 



46 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

To his official duties, uncongenial as dry commercial 
statistics must have been to a mind like his, Fonblanque 
now devoted himself with that earnestness which he 
brought to bear upon whatever he undertook ; and, al- 
though many of his political writings were as brilliant as 
ever, he was not sorry to make public employment an ex- 
cuse for the paucity of his contributions to the ' Examiner.' 

In 1854 he was appointed the English representative 
of the International Statistical Congress ; and in a letter 
to Mr. Forster he thus describes his reception in that 
capacity at the Tuileries : — 

' Paris, September 17. 

' To-day the Emperor received us all. As the dele- 
gate of England, I had to stand at the head of the Con- 
gress, composed of about 300 men of all nations. After 
I had made my bow, the Emperor, instead of passing on, 
stopped, and said : " M. Fonblanque is an old acquaint- 
ance," offered his hand as of old, and entered into familiar 
conversation about me and mine. 1 It was all very kind, 
and it made me so completely forget the occasion that I 
nearly committed a breach of etiquette in conversing 
with him as if he had been a private individual. Consi- 
dering all that has passed, I was and am pleased ; and not 
the less so because the English members of the Congress 
were also pleased at the reception of their representative. 

1 During his residence in England Prince Louis Napoleon Lad been on 
terms of personal friendship with Fonblanque, who, at a time when it * 
much the fashion to decry him. gave the future Emperor of the French full 
credit for good sense and more than ordinary information (see Extracts, p. 
.304) ; though he never, after success had changed the current of opinion in 
England, would admit his claim to genius or high powers of statesmanship. 
After the coup cCitat of December he condemned the Prince President's pro- 
ceedings in terms so severe as to elicit a remonstrance and explanation from 
one of Napoleon's prominent supporters. Fonblanque. however, always 
maintained that the act in question was utterly unjustifiable, and as impolitic 
as it was illegal. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTJE. 47 

You will say I am about to turn , courtier : I can't 
help it.' 

Fonblanque's literary reputation was certainly as widely 
acknowledged abroad as in his own country. During his 
occasional travels on the Continent he was always sure of 
a flattering reception in literary and political society, and 
I have myself been indebted to the circumstance of bear- 
ing his name for hospitality and kindness on the American 
continent. On his visiting Brussels in 1849, M. Van de 
Weyer introduced him to a Belgian colleague as ' Le Paul 
Louis Courier de 1' Angleterre ; ' and among other com- 
pliments paid him in France was that of his being unani- 
mously elected a corresponding member of the Imperial 
Academy of Moral and Political Science — a fact announced 
to him in peculiarly flattering terms by Baron Dupin. 

During the last ten years of his life he dropped strangely 
out of society. He might still be seen occasionally 
poring over a volume in the library of the Athenaeum, 
or absorbed in his game at the Chess Club in St. James's. 
Now and then he might even be met at the table of 
an intimate friend, when flashes of the old wit and humour 
would brighten the conversation ; but silence and solitude 
seemed to have become more congenial to his tastes. 
For the last two or three years he retired completely within 
himself; and when he died, in 1872, his name, once so 
familiar to all in the world of politics and literature, seemed 
to have been blotted out of the memory of man ; and, with 
a few exceptions, his death elicited only a passing notice, 
as that of one who had lived and toiled in an age gone 
by, and in a cause long since established. The present 
generation did not remember that few men had fought 
more gallantly, or contributed more powerfully to the 
triumph of that cause when it had but few supporters, 
than Albany Fonblanque ; and that many a statesman, 



48 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

whose memory the Liberal party still hold in grateful 
reverence, had received his political training in the school 
of the brilliant Editor of the ' Examiner.' 

The private life of a professional literary man in 
England is rarely an eventful one, and I have little to 
record of Albany Fonblanque's that could be of interest 
to the public. Yet of his inner life, in the German sense, 
I would fain say something ; and all the more so, since 
they who should judge him by his published writings 
only would do wrong to his character. His earnestness 
of conviction, his intense hatred of everything approaching 
to injustice, cruelty, or oppression, and a certain political 
intolerance, inseparable perhaps from a strong political 
faith, led him frequently to infuse into his writings a 
bitterness which was not in his nature. On the other 
hand, his keen sense of humour, which always tempted 
him to seize upon the ludicrous features of a question, 
however grave or serious it might be in itself, led un- 
friendly or superficial readers to charge him with levity. t 
It is perhaps unavoidable that a writer, whose vocation it 
is to attack political and social abuses, should allow the 
hard and aggressive side of his character to predominate 
over the amiable; but in the case of Fonblanque the habit 
of criticising never destroyed or weakened the power of 
appreciation. No man had a deeper reverence for good- 
ness and truth ; and, if he preferred laughing at vice and 
folly to howling at them, it was because he knew that 
ridicule was often a more effective weapon in the hands 
of a moralist than invective. He would not waste his 
power in breaking a butterfly upon the wheel ; or, to quote 
his own expression, he never used a sledge hammer 
while a foil would answer his purpose. 

In all times it has been the practice of theologians to 
impute Lrreligion to those who attack pretensions, privi- 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 49 

leges, or abuses which it is the interest of Churchmen to 
uphold ; l and Albany Fonblanque, who was as impatient 
of spiritual arrogance as of political tyranny, and who 
waged war alike against bigotry, whether in a Eomish 
Cardinal, a ranting Methodist, an Anglican Bishop or 
a Scotch Sabbatarian, did not escape this charge. He 
never wrote one line, however, nor did he ever utter a 
word, that could even be distorted into a scoff against 
religion. He was little orthodox, it is true : but irreverence 
was utterly foreign to his nature. 

In his habits he was peculiarly simple and temperate ; 
in his tastes, refined almost to fastidiousness. Practical 
as were the occupations of his life, the poetical element 
was as strong in his temperament as the humorous. His 
critical faculties, always powerful, never found more 
happy expressions than in his intuitive appreciation of 
beauties in Music and the Fine Arts, the theoretical study 
of which was one of his greatest pleasures. 

His conversation was at all times agreeable and in- 
structive, and, when he became animated, singularly 
brilliant. Although somewhat reserved among strangers, 
or in general intercourse, in the society of friends his 
language and manner had a charm which few could resist. 
In his ' Spirit of the Age ' Mr. Home says, with much 
truth : ' In his combined powers of the brilliant and argu- 
mentative, the narrative and epigrammatic, and his match- 
less adroitness in illustrative quotation and reference, 
Fonblanque stands alone.' He used his wit to instruct 
rather than to amuse, and never made you laugh without, 
at the same time, making you think. 

1 ' Whatever lie (the Bishop) may do, though it may stint and starve the 
religious miuistration, cannot be hostile to religion ; hut the representation 
of it, or exposure, as it is coarsely called, is always denounced as hostile to 
religion.' See ' Brahmens and Bishops/ Selections, p. 297. 

E 



50 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

Partly from ill -health, but more from constitutional 
reserve, Fonblanque was averse to general society, and 
never had or coveted a large circle of acquaintances. To 
compensate for this, however, he had many warm and 
attached friends. A friendship once formed by him was 
strong and enduring ; and the letters which I have found 
in his possession bear remarkable testimony to his faculty 
of inspiring affection, and confidence in those whom 
he liked and admired. Nothing can be more gratifying 
than the tone in which many who had lived with him upon 
terms of intimacy have expressed themselves of him to 
me, and to other of his relatives, since his death ; although, 
as I have said, for the last few years of his life he had 
almost completely withdrawn from even their society. 
Among his most intimate friends and correspondents, I 
may name the two Bulwers, Lord and Lady Holland, 
Lord Durham, Lalor Sheil, Edwin Landseer, John Forster, 
Lady Giffard 1 and her sister Mrs. Norton, 2 Thackeray, 3 

1 Lord Dufferin, in acknowledging my offer to restore to liim his mother's 
letters to Fonblanque, writes : — 

1 Lady Giffard had a most warm and affectionate admiration for him, and 
taught me from my earliest days to regard him as one of her kindest and 
pleasantest friends.' 

2 In reply to my request that she would send me any letters from my 
uncle suitable for publication, Mrs. Norton wrote : ' If I have any letters 
that can be of use to you, from that kind and clever friend, you shall have 
them ; but such are far more likely to be among- the papers of my sister, 
Lady Giffard, than among mine. Many a time have we all said that no 
conversation was so entertaining or brilliant as that carried on between 
those two.' 

3 Miss Thackeray wrote to me as follows, in acknowledgment of some of 
her father's private letters to my uncle, which I thought it my duty to 
restore to her : — 

1 1 have always remembered my father's warm admiration and apprecia- 
tion of Mr. Fonblanque's great gifts and charm of manner and of nature : 
and I was thinking, the other day, how much pleasure my father had re 
from a charming expression of admiration for "Philip" with which your uncle 
met him one day at the club. It must have been almost their last meeting, 
and I know my father said that it was because they came from Mr. Fon- 
blanque, that the words had pleased him so much.' 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 51 

Macready, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Count 
d'Orsay, Lord and Lady Lovelace (Byron's Ada 1 ), and 
many others, distinguished in various ways and of widely 
different modes of life and thought, but whose language 
testifies alike to the warm interest they took in him. 

Other reasons besides want of space preclude me from 
publishing most of these letters ; but the few which I 
subjoin will, I think, have the effect of counteracting any 
erroneous impressions as to Fonblanque's nature, which 
his published writings might in some instances be apt to 
produce. They will also, perhaps, afford some insight into 
that inner life, the contemplation of which, in the case of 
men who have worked much for the public, is always 
possessed of some interest. E. B. db F. 



LETTEKS. 

From the Author of c Devereux ' to the Editor of the 
c Examiner.' ' 2 pp. -, 

< Sir, — Will you allow me to request your acceptance of 
the accompanying volumes ? I fear you will not like them 
better than the " Disowned," but I know at least, should 
you review them, that I shall receive a candid and un- 
biassed opinion. In any case I shall have the pleasure 
of considering the book, insignificant in itself, will be 
deemed a tribute of respect to a Journal to which, let its 
opinion of my other works be what it may, I shall always 
consider myself personally grateful for its notice of 

1 See the notice on this lady's death, Selections, p. 113. 

2 I quote this letter, written in 1830, when the two men were strangers to 
each other, as the first of a series opening the way to a lifelong friendship. 

E 2 



52 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

" Pelhain ; " as the wit, the talent, and the honesty of the 
" Examiner " make its praise an honour to any man of 
an ambition much higher than mine. 

6 1 beg, with high consideration, to remain 
6 Your very obliged Servant, 

' The Author of " Devereux." 

' 8, New Burlington Street.' 

Albany Fonblanque to Edward Lytton Bulwer. 

' December 19, 1835. 

4 My dear Friend, — When I parted from you I had not 
seen " Eienzi ; " I must now tell you for self-satisfaction 
what I think of it. I have thought you inferior to Scott in 
the management of incidents and dramatic situations, and 
in the production of interest, as much as you have been 
superior to him, and because you have been superior to 
him, in fine reflection and a pervading loftiness of senti- 
ment and of moral aims. In " Eienzi " you seem to have 
equalled or surpassed Scott in the essentials of romance, 
and to have transcended yourself in thought, spirit, and 
moral. 

' From the time that I got into the first half of the first 
volume I could not lay the book down. I was almost 
blind with cold, but I read on, read my fire out, then 
read in bed, and read again by the first light of day. 
Since I read " Guy Mannering " in my boyish days I never 
felt such an interest in a story. . . . After this I cannot 
wish you to write another novel ; hitherto Alp has risen 
above Alp, but I doubt any ascent beyond " Eienzi." . . . 
The political philosophy is not the least beautiful part of it. 

6 1 have probably enjoyed the story more from only 
having the outline of it in my mind, which will also be 
the common case of the public ; and the interest created 
by the situations in the second and third volumes, 
especially the arrest and judgment of Montreal, was the 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 53 

intensest I ever experienced. No acted drama could 
realise the effect. Liberavi animam meam. 

6 And now one word on another matter. You see that 
West Gloucester has been abandoned without a struggle 
to the Tories, and Northamptonshire lost ! Things are 
looking very ill, I think. After having offended one set 
of people by making too much of O'Connell, the Whigs 
are now disgusting the set that remained to them by 
making too little of him. So true it is, Dum vitant stulti 
vitia in contraria currunt. . . . Adieu ! 

6 Ever faithfully yours, 

'A. F.' 

Mr. E. L. Buhver to Albany Fonblanque. 

1 Margate, September 30, 1837. 

4 My dear Fonblanque, — I have long wished to write to 
you, but, not knowing whether you had left Malvern, I 
thought I would delay my epistle till your possible return 
to London. 

' 1 cannot indeed longer resist thanking you for your 
review of " Maltr avers," the generous kindness of which has 
reconciled me to my tasks. I know that, however your 
friendly feeling may insensibly magnify merit or mitigate 
faults, your praise is sincere and good, and your judgment 
has relieved me of more anxiety than any other novel of 
mine ever caused me. Perhaps it is a rarity in criticism 
to satisfy an author ; it is a rarer still to go beyond satis- 
fying him. - 

'I am enjoying the sea-breezes here, and shall stay some 
weeks on the coast. What heavenly weather ! 

8 Lardner is much at me about the Quarterly. I cannot 
make up my mind. At all events, I shall steer clear of 
the responsibilities of editorship. 

' I had a melancholyish letter from Lady Blessington the 
other day. It always seems to me as if d'Orsay's blague 



54 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

was too much for her. People who live with those too 
high-spirited for them always appear to me to get the 
life sucked out of them. The sun drinks up the dews. 
I hope, however, that the attack of the "Times" on 
" Maltravers " will soothe a little the remembrance of that 
on the " Two Friends." x In the misfortunes of our best 
friends, &c. 

' I heartily trust you have got thoroughly set up by the 
bleak healthfullness of Malvern — -a sort of air that always 
makes me feel like a drum. 

6 "With kind regards to Mrs. Fonblanque, 

' Gratefully and most truly yours, 

' E. L. Bulwee.' 

No date (1842). 

'My dear Fonblanque, — I am particularly gratified by 
your very kind note. I dislike troubling another with 
first copies of books which I fancy he may not be pleased 
with ; but nothing delights me more than when I can 
venture to presume something congenial between you and 
myself. I have just got my own first copy of my little 
volume, and send it herewith. You will have a cleaner 
one during the week. I suspect that you and I both 
dislike the school into which modern poets almost una- 
nimously merge : half Wordsworth, and the other half 
Shelley and Keats. My attempt is really to restore some- 
thing of old regularity, with plain earnest meaning, to 
verse, and to trust as little as possible to words, as much 
as possible to thoughts. Few people will read any 
poetry ; few critics will like mine. But you, I hope and 
flatter myself, will be among the few who will at least 
understand its object and purpose. ' Ever yours, 

' E. L. B.' 

1 A novel by Lady Blessington, severely criticised in the ' Times ' on its 
publication. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUF. 55 

' 48, Connaught Square, 
< June 5, 1842. 

' My dear Bulwer, — I think I have told you that of the 
poets of our time I most delight in Crabbe, the only 
matter of taste in which I heartily agree with Macaulay. 
In the " Ill-omened Marriage " I enjoy again the masculine 
handling, the nerve, the pithy pointed thought, the dis- 
tinct portraiture, the rapid flow of the story, of Crabbe ; 
and without his blemishes of antithesis and conceit, and 
the verging of the familiar to the vulgar. Your style is 
higher pitched and sustained. Like Crabbe as it is, I 
could not find in Crabbe a more vigorous line than : 

u The man's great nature leapt into the day." 

There is more of Dryden in it. Also : 

" Yet gifts are sometimes as offences viewed, 
And easy is the mean man's gratitude." 

The denouement is quite unexpected and happy. Fine 
thoughts and beautiful turns I find in the other poems, 
but I confess my great preference for the " Ill-omened 
Marriage." In that you have put forth a new power. 

4 Ever, my dear Bulwer, 

' Faithfully yours, 

' A. FONBLAJ^QUE.' 

' My dear Fonblanque, — I am particularly delighted by 
your kind note, the more so as from your silence I fore- 
boded utter dislike to my little volume and a benevolent 
wish to avoid giving me pain by saying so. I thought 
you would like the " Ill-omened Marriage " the best. In 
fact, that was what I meant when I said I fancied you 
would like the book. 

6 Believe me ever most truly yours, 

'E. L. B* 

1 Craven Cottage, 
' Monday.' 



56 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 

' Connauglit Square, Feb. 5, 1849. 

' My dear Bulwer, — I have not written to thank you 
for the welcome present of your " Arthur," having waited 
first to read it, which I have clone with admiration of the 
varied genius you display ; the alternations of fine imagina- 
tion and turns of rich wit. Yet with all this I like your 
couplets better than the stanza, perhaps because I am 
heretical in poetry. To my taste, however, such as it is, 
your couplets have the ring of Dry den, the life, the vigour, 
and the rapid conveyance of thought. 

4 When you are in Parliament, which, I trust, will be 
before long, I shall hope to see you oftener than it has 
been my fortune to do lately. 

6 Ever, my dear Friend, 

6 Sincerely yours, 

< A. F.' 

From Mr. Henry Bulwer} 

1 105, Piccadilly, Jan. 1838. 

6 My dear Fonblanque, — I received your letter, and feel 
deeply sensible of the kindness and friendship with which 
you express yourself. It will be a source of infinite plea- 
sure to me to have acquired any claim, however small, to 
your friendship. Do not be worried by anything. I should 
recommend, as you want to be comfortable where you 
are, taking a small and nice house without loss of time. 
Can I be of any service to you in any way ? Only let me 
know, and believe me ever 

' Your affectionate Friend, 

6 H. L. Bulwer.' 

1 I quote this letter from the late Lord Dalling, as one of many -which 
show the affectionate, almost tender interest which Albany Fonblanque 
had the faculty of inspiring" in those who had once become his friends. 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 57 

The following letter was in reply to advice tendered, 
through Count d'Orsay, to Prince Louis Napoleon, shortly 
after his election to the French Presidency : — 

' Mon cher Fonblanque, — J'espere que vous avez vu que 
notre conseil a ete ecoute ; les reductions dans l'armee et 
la marine sont tres fortes, et Napoleon a eprouve, je vous 
assure, une grande opposition pour en arriver Ik. L'armee, 
qui etait en 1848 de 502,196 hommes et de 100,432 
chevaux, sera reduite en 1849 a 380,824 hommes et 
92,410 chevaux. Le Budget de la Marine est diminue 
de vingt deux millions et plus ; la flotte en activite est 
reduite a dix vaisseaux de ligne, huit fregates, etc. — et il 
y a aussi une grande reduction dans les travaux des 
arsenaux. Tout cela devrait plaire a John Bull et k 
Cobclen. Je vous promets que ces reductions n'en resteront 
pas la ; mais il faut considerer la difficulte qu'il y a de 
toucher aux joujous des enfants franc, ais, car chez nous 
l'armee est l'objet principal ; chez vous ce n'est qu'un 
accessoire. ' Yotre affectionne, 

' d'Oksay. 

1 Gore House, Jan. 26, 1849.' 

Extracts from Correspondence with Mr. John Forster, 

On Macaulays History. — ' Macaulay's History is an 
infinite series. It belongs to Fluxions ; and, if Brougham 
gives you the method for the differential calculus, I advise 
you to work out a formula, iixing when events, moving 
at a certain ratio, will be overtaken by a historian dis- 
serting at another ratio, and with a copiousness as the 
square of the distance of time : — 



A.-2cs/y + x _ M ./E+6D. 



58 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUF. 

On Macaulays Addison. — ' I read your " Steele " with 
admiration, not so much for the scholarly writing and fine 
criticism, but chiefly for the wise and, because wise, the 
tender humanity. Macaulay's faculty of judgment can 
never rise to the catholic, or get beyond a special plea. 
He is a great master of colour who cannot draw. He 
fastens upon a feature and gives it as a man. Your office 
of righting wronged reputations is a noble one, and from 
your scrupulous sense of justice in restoring what is due 
to one you never disparage another, as less scrupulous 
writers might have been tempted to do in this very 
instance of Steele and Addison.' 

Charles Dickens. — ' I have been laid up with one of my 
attacks, which I mention only in honour of Dickens, who 
carries me through such sore afflictions. Last year I took 
to my bed in company with " Barnaby Budge " at Paris. 
This season " Martin Chuzzlewit " has carried me through 
my intestine troubles. The Todgers made me laugh 
between such fits as Gil Bias should have had to warrant 
his roars in the cavern. An author like Dickens cannot 
know the good he does in his manifold services to 
humanity and alleviating ministrations under distresses.' 

Mary Barton. — ' How beautiful " Mary Barton " is ! 
Who can write so well except Miss Martineau ? But she 
could hardly feel so well. Who is it ? ' 

On an ostentatious display of charity. — ' I look upon 

the case of as one of indecent exposure of 

wealth.' 

Public Expenditure. — ' It is the inveterate habit of all 
governments, when they- have increased establishments for 
special occasions, to retain the augmentation after the 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 59 

cause for it has ceased, on the plea of some apprehension 
or necessity in posse which would not have warranted 
the original imposition. It is like the wolf in the fable, 
who, having prayed grace to rear her whelps, when that 
is done says : " Now that they have grown up, you may 
turn us out if you can." ' 

Papal Aggression. — ' I think too high a tone is taken 
against the impertinence of parcelling out England into 
papal sees. It is offensive but not alarming, and I should 
prefer laughing at it to raging at it. Is a titular bishop 
really more formidable than a painted soldier ? ' 

Life Peerages. — ' The more I see of this Life Peerage 
question, the less I like the opposition. It is essentially 
.aristocratic : the hereditary tenure against the personal 
merit or peculiar aptitude required. The Legislature 
wants a man with a special knowledge, and it must have 
a man with a line of, perhaps, fools after him in the same 
place, or lack altogether what it requires. ... As for 
the constitutional question, whatever is convenient is apt 
to be called unconstitutional. I think there is much good 
sense in Lord Grey's argument : If the assistance of a poor 
man is wanted in the Lords, is it to be foregone, or is his 
family to be extinguished under a coronet ? ' 

Lord Raglan at the Alma. — 'Lord Eaglan certainly 
fights better than he writes. He loses his readers in 
details, and the grand result lies in a line and a half at the 
tail of the paragraph about the Highland Brigade. Not 
a word about what the Eussians did after the expulsion 
from the heights, nor of the state of the broken forces, or 
the extent of their losses. How much better an idea St. 
Arnaud's despatch gives of the battle and the results ; but 
he concerned himself more about what was done, than 
about who did it and how it was done, in minute detail ; 



60 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLAXQUK 

minute compared with the grand result to which they 
contributed ' 

Lord Raglans death. — ' I do not wish to handle poor 
Lord Baglan's death. Magnis tamen excidit ausis. He was 
a fair, honest, high-minded gentleman, and an excellent 
administrator at the desk, and what more was expected 
of him was unreasonably expected. How should he turn 
out a Wellington at threescore and ten who never put 
a squadron in the field ? ' 

Scenes in the Crimean War. — ' I have cut out a letter 
from the " Times," which, to my mincl, details heroism 
the most sublime. Surely such devotion should not pass 
without reward, the reward at least of the honour due. 
Imagine the solitary Engineer at his post apart, assi- 
duously performing his gloomy duty of keeping up the 
furnaces for the baths of the sick and dying ! I would 
not compare this heroism, wanting all stimulus but the 
stimulus of humanity and duty, with the heroism of the 
field ; for it is unfair to disparage one fine thing for a 
better : but a more loving admiration belongs to it.' 

Foreign Legions. — 'With volunteers offering at the rate 
of one thousand a week, why a Foreign Legion ? Are not 
the men of Inkerman good enough ? Would Germans 
be better ? At the moment when we have found that 
the British soldier has the valour of old and superadded 
moral qualities of high worth, is it the time to cast about, 
to put him aside and to prefer foreigners ? 

' A Polish Legion would have a meaning (though for 
my part I have not much confidence in Poles), and it 
would have been understood that Poles were not employed 
as better than other people, or equally good, but that 
their presence would act on their countrymen in the 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE. 61 

enemy's ranks. But of Germans what is to be said? 
There is no a-propos ; nothing but a slur on Englishmen/ 

Soldiers' Letters from the Crimea. — ' I have been much 
struck by the letters of soldiers and sailors published. 
There was a very striking one in the " Globe " of Thurs- 
day, in which the writer says : " If you had heard the 
cheers of our men, you would have thanked God that you 
were not aEussian ! " But the best of all is the letter in 
the " Daily News," headed " A Skirmish in the Baltic." 
The account of the death of the Eussian is one of the most 
touching and natural things I ever read. If it be fiction, 
it rivals Defoe. How good is that " he did not look like 
an enemy ; " and again, when the man is dead the writer 
thinks of the Turks and the Eussians, and the rest of them : 
u but all that seemed so far off, and the dead man so 
near ! " Can that touch of nature be surpassed? But the 
whole letter is admirable from the first word to the last. 
What an interesting compilation might be made of such 
things ! ' 

The Peace Conference.-^-' There is one point, and only 
one, in Disraeli's speech which seems to me sound ; and that 
is, that to carry on negotiation and war together is to damp 
the spirit essential to the conduct of war. People are 
made to look for peace when they ought to be looking 
to the means of extorting peace on advantageous terms. 
We cannot have two such opposite irons in the fire with- 
out detriment to one of them. 

' Gladstone's argument is a rare Gladstonisation. We 
must not touch on the pride of Eussia without diminishing 
her power, and we must not diminish her power, for that 
would touch her pride. What in the world remains then 
but submission ? ' 



62 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUF. 

The American Newspaper Press. — ' Cobden says truly 
that nobody in America would buy a newspaper a day 
old, and the only surprise is that anybody will buy so 
meagre a thing even for its clay. But what an admission 
is this of the ephemeral character of the Press to which 
ours is to be assimilated ! In many of our newspapers 
there are articles which are talked of, looked for, and 
sought out long after their day, while in America- . . ! ' 

Judge Talfourd. — ' You must be much shocked by 
poor Talfourd's death, but surely it is better to go out of 
the world so, than broken down by illness. This, how- 
ever, we must not say, for the godly are tenacious of long 
suffering, and what they call preparation, which is any- 
thing but preparation. I observe in the announcement 
of his death that the hour is particularly named. You 
are aware that he was christened " JSToon " because he was 
born about that hour, an unusual circumstance. His 
death took place about the same time, and removed him 
(I think kindly) before the waning lights of his fame 
and life.' 

Thomas Moore. — ' What Lord John says of Moore's 
vanity is the truth, but not the whole truth. He had no 
hearty admiration for any merit or genius which had not 
the aristocratic stamp. Mark how indifferently, almost 
contemptuously, he mentions Charles Lamb ; and the faint 
interest he took in, and poor praise he gives to, the novels 
of Scott upon their first appearance. He did not ever • 
value Scott for his writings indeed, but as he was courted 
and caressed by the great, I think I could write an 
article on vanity on Lord John's text.' 

On Fagging. — ' Dr. Vaughan prays daily not to be led 
into temptation, and to do as he would be done by is the 
rule of his Christian life. It is therefore clearly his duty 



MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQUK 63 

not to lead others into the temptation from which he him- 
self prays to be spared ; and how does he reconcile with 
this obligation putting the worst temptation into the 
hands of a youth — the temptation to an abuse of violence 
in punishing an offence against himself ; the temptation 
to wrong and cruelty in vesting in the same person the 
offices of prosecutor, jury, judge, and executioner? ' 

John Black, Editor of the Morning Chronicle. — ' Black's 
merits were his learning, essentially German, his simplicity 
of character, genial cheery nature, and integrity. His 
writings were full of matter, rather incorrect, and marked 
with the negligentia hominis magis de re quam de verbo 
laborantis. Though rather rude himself in style, he had 
a delicate perception and appreciation of the style of 
others, and there Avas no better critic. He was one of 
the few whom Cobbett feared as being so very much his 
overmatch in knowledge, though inferior as a writer of 
English. The " Daily News " says he was unassisted in 
the "Chronicle," but I was his collaborateur from 1821 
to 1824, and wrote most of the articles on the Unpaid 
Magistracy.' 

Legs expressive of sorrow. — ' Pray look at a little pic- 
ture in the Exhibition — " Parting Words." It interests 
me much. The subject simple enough : a dying girl and 
mourning father. His hands are before his face, but his 
feet speak. Just remark the expression of humility in 
their posture. They tell the story : poverty, hopelessness, 
sorrow. He has, beggar as he is, one rich possession, 
and it is passing from him ' 

' A-propos of what I wrote to you about the shrinking 
expression of the sorrowing man's legs in the little 
picture u Parting Words," I find this parallel in Moore's 
diary : " Lord L. mentioned Mrs. Sicldons saying (what 



64 MEMOIR OF ALBANY FONBLANQTJF . 

English !) one day when looking over the statues at Lans- 
downe House, that the first thing that suggested to her 
the mode of expressing intensity of feeling was the 
position of some of the Egyptian statues with the arms 
close down by the sides, and the hands clenched." The 
legs and feet are, I contend, as expressive. Tell me if I 
am not right.' 

On Forsters ' Arrest of the Five Members' — ' Any 
mark of regard from one of my oldest and best friends 
must be precious to me, and the more so when it treats of 
a subject that brings out all your strength and spirit. . . . 
No one else has done justice to that period from which we 
date our liberties, and it is by studying and understanding 
it, as you help one to do, that the spirit to preserve those 
liberties in all their integrity must be cherished.' 

The moorings lifted. — (On Mr. Forster, in 1856, an- 
nouncing his appointment to the Board of Lunacy, and 
consequent relinquishment of his connection with the 
c Examiner.') 

' I apprehended the nature of your communication and 
opened your note with misgivings. I cannot deny the 
wisdom of your determination, though all the other cir- 
cumstances of it, the straightforwardness, the kindness, 
the frankness, make it only the more unacceptable to 
me. Quamvis digressu veteris confusus amici, laudo 
tamen. You may see by the erasures that my eyes and 
hand are not very true and steady, and, in truth, I write 
with a heavy heart. The breaking of a tie at my time of 
life is a sad thing. We have been connected now for 
twenty-three years, and have never had a difference be- 
yond opinion — seldom that — never unfriendly. Be your 
successor who he may, he can never fill your place. I 
feel that my moorings are lifted.' 



SELECTION OF WETTINGS 



FROM 



'THE EXAMINEE' 



INTBODUCTION 



When in 1837 Albany Fonblanque was induced to ven- 
ture upon the experiment of publishing in a collective 
form his principal contributions to the ' Examiner' during 
the preceding ten years, he did so with much misgiving as to 
the result, knowing that many of the subjects treated had 
lost their interest, and doubting whether the intrinsic merit 
of his writings, as literary compositions, could redeem 
the loss. The public verdict, however, was more than 
favourable. ' They are as fresh as ever ' was the expres- 
sion used by more than one of his critics, and to this day 
' England under Seven Administrations ' may be read with 
interest and pleasure. 

The Editor of this Volume feels assured that Albany 
Fonblanque's writings from '37 to '60 are possessed of 
merit at least equal to that of his earlier productions, and 
he has accordingly endeavoured to select the best of these 
upon a variety of political and social subjects. 

In a recent reference 1 to ' England under Seven Ad- 
ministrations ' it is remarked that : ' Younger readers may 
miss the novelty of treatment and brilliancy of fence 
which delighted the Emancipators, the Eeformers, and 

1 The 'Scotsman,' October 21, 1872. 
f2 



68 INTRODUCTION. 



earlier Freetraders of the brave days of old. But that 
is very easily explained, and a large part of the explana- 
tion supplies additional evidence of the greatness of Fon- 
blanque's merits and services. Many of the personages 
and the incidents which occupied Fonblanque's pen have 
been forgotten, and the atmosphere in which he 
sparkled has long ago been dissipated. Many of his 
arguments may or would seem now mere matter of 
course, but in his time they were new and ingenious 
inventions, and the fact that they have obtained general 
acceptance, and have kept till now, is the best proof of 
their soundness, and of the service rendered in their pro- 
duction and popularisation. Some even of his most 
famous phrases may not now seem so fresh and piquant 
as they did to those who read them first. Age may have 
withered and custom staled ; but they were brilliant at 
their birth ; and that they have become customary is 
proof that their brilliancy was not mere lacquer.' 

The cause in which Albany Fonblanque toiled and 
fought has now been established ; but as the student of 
military history loves to visit the battlefields of the past, 
and to trace the steps which led to victory, so it cannot 
be without interest to the present generation to examine 
and to study the means by which the triumph of a great 
political cause was achieved in days gone by. 

Albany Fonblanque's style is unique in the wide field 
of English Journalism. Thoroughly original himself, he 
has bad no imitators. Playful when most in earnest, and 
never so convincing as when provoking laughter, he went 
on Bteadily in the path of progress, overthrowing 
obstacle after obstacle with a hardly perceptible effort. 
He is well described by the author of ' Orion,' as 'stand- 
ing with an open code of social laws in one hand, and a 



INTRODUCTION. ■ 69 



two-edged sword in the other, waving the latter slowly 
to-and-fro with a grave face, while dictating his periods 
to the laughing amanuensis.' 

The Editor confidently submits to the public a series of 
writings which served their practical purpose in their day, 
but the wit and wisdom of which survive the interest of 
the subject. 



CHAPTEE 1. 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



MR. CANNING. 

Though we differ from our Liberal contemporaries in 
estimating the character of Mr. Canning, we cannot but 
deplore his loss, at so critical a period, as a national 
misfortune. The key-stone of our triumphal arch has 
fallen to the ground : as a stone its worth may have 
been small ; its position gave its value. Mr. Canning 
was the binding power of the new Administration ; he 
held and compressed it together. At his sudden removal, 
we naturally tremble lest the fabric should crumble to 
pieces. Were we sure that it would survive, that the 
vacant niche would be worthily filled, we should be 
inclined to account the death of Mr. Canning a calamity 
of comparatively minor importance. The government 
of the country may go on better for the people, better 
for its own honour and harmony, under the guidance of 
a man, if of less genius than our departed Premier, also 
of a less mottled political complexion of good and evil. 
Had he lived, Mr. Canning must have been clogged by 
his past conduct in his future career. It has been observed 
by the ablest of our contemporaries that, when he com- 



72 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

mittetl himself to hostilities with the principles of liberty, 
he was a young man led by authority and circumstances ; 
and that since his emancipation from the thraldom of the 
High Tory party, when he has been free to follow the 
bent of his own mind, he has ranged himself on the side 
of generosity, justice, and rational freedom. There is 
undeniably some truth in this remark. The subservient 
Mr. Canning and the dominant Mr. Canning were different 
persons ; but the dominant Mr. Canning, though he had 
broken his chain, had a piece of it hanging about his 
neck, which the enemies of the people could make a 
handle to check him in the race of improvement. He 
was not 

. . . . in eeipso totus, teres atque rotimdus, 
Externi ne quid valeat per leve morari. 

He abounded with salient points, which could be seized 
on to stay him whenever he engaged in the furtherance 
of the public good ; for he had solemnly committed 
himself to propositions and principles antagonist to those 
which he was latterly expected to promote. His superior 
powers might have enabled him to triumph over these 
obstacles : but here would have been a waste of force ; 
and a man who has not these obstacles to encounter will 
accomplish his objects with less difficulty. 

If Mr. Canning's death breaks up the existing Admin- 
istration, and leads to the restoration of the outcast party, 
it will be the sorest affliction that ever befell a nation. 
If, on the other hand, it does not disturb the present 
arrangements, and a man of sufficient ability, whose 
whole life lias man i Tested the liberal set of his mind, is 
substituted for one of, at least, inconsistent character, the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 73 

country may be a gainer by the change. Would, how- 
ever, that this trial had been deferred to a far distant 
day ! We deplore the extinction of so brilliant a mind 
as that of the late Chief ; we sorrow too at the death of 
the man, when we hear the savage rejoicings of his 
enemies : 

'E\Qpoi yeXwai. 

We could go on to point out one, the most odious of the 
faction, to whom the description applies : 

fiaivtrai v<j? r)Sovrjc. 

We also lament that Mr. Canning's life, whether devoted 
to good or the mere negation of evil, was not protracted 
to a period which would have put a natural extinguisher 
on the antiquated party to which he was opposed. 

Abroad we apprehend that the death of Mr. Canning 
will be deeply, deeply indeed, felt. His name was the 
very watchword of liberty, and oppression quailed at its 
ascendancy. The loss of him will cast down the good 
and elate the bad of all countries. The leaning of our 
late Premier to liberality in his foreign policy cannot be 
disputed ; and in certain grand principles which he asserted 
in his domestic policy it is equally undeniable : but it is 
remarkable that, though Mr. Canning was often in the 
general the avowed enemy of oppression, we never in 
any one single instance found him so in the particular. 
From the earliest period of his history down to the close 
of the last session, what case of oppression came before 
the House of Commons, and called forth Mr. Canning in 
any other character than that of the apologist or the 
advocate of the wrong-doer? From Kenrick up to 



74 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

Lord Charles Somerset, Mr. Canning has been the same 
man. The oppression of the peasant, the abuses at the 
Cape, the butchery of the people at Manchester — every 
kind of crime of authority has found a ready vindicator 
in him. Was his love of liberty and justice on so great 
a scale that it could not comprehend an individual case ? 
But better things were with some reason expected from 
him, and death has set the seal of doubt on his character ! 
On Canning's genius it is unnecessary for us now to 
dissert ; our opinion of it has been sufficiently often 
expressed. He was the last of the rhetoricians. Had he 
been a less orator, he would probably have been a greater 
man. He followed, however, the tawdry fashion of his 
day; and his tinsel and finery could not disguise the 
thews and sinews they encumbered. Self-complacency 
was a prominent feature of his character, and the nice 
description, Omnium quce dixerat feceratque arte quadam 
ostentator, was peculiarly applicable to him. But, if ever 
vanity was excusable in man, it was excusable in George 
Canning, who, endowed with every choicest gift of nature, 
had risen from a low condition to the highest office in 
the State, and seen centred in himself the best hopes of 
the best men in the civilised world. We read in the 
tales of superstition of men who have made compacts 
with the fiend. A Faustus could hardly have desired to 
be more than a Canning. A fine person for the love of 
woman ; a mind for the admiration of man ; a golden 
tide of fortune, which had its slacks indeed, but no ebb ; 
and a death which has abruptly left his character as it 
was gilded with the glow of a world's best hopes. — (1827.) 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 






GEORGE IV. 

The life of George IV. has been spread before the 
public at ample length by our contemporaries ; and, when 
we glance over its circumstances, we are at a loss to trace 
the ground for the praise which has been accorded to its 
tenor. In his youth he was libertine and profuse ; and, 
from his mature age, he showed a preference for persons 
possessed of no qualities entitling them to consideration 
or respect. They have been distinguished by the King's 
favour, and nothing else — quacks, serviles, sycophants, 
and buffoons. The maxim noscitur a sociis would be a 
severe test of the late King's character. Where oc- 
casions for magnanimity have offered, George IV. has 
been found wanting. His persecution of his Queen was 
at once mean and cruel ; and his conduct towards 
Napoleon Bonaparte, however justifiable in policy, was 
not very exalted in sentiment. In smaller instances he 
indicated similiar pettiness of hostility ; Sir Eobert Wil- 
son and Mr. Denman may be named in point. His friend- 
ships, as we have observed, had not for their objects the 
' most worthy or respectable characters ; but, such as they 
were, there was no deficiency of warmth in them while 
they lasted, and George IV. was capable even of generous 
sacrifices for those in whom he felt an interest. But he 
obeyed no higher springs of action than emotion. In 
the personal character of the late King there is little to 
praise and much to condemn ; and as for the public 
events of his reign, for which honour is demanded for 
him, while in ignorance of his part in the accomplish- 
ment of them, we know not how to concur in the praise. 



7G BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

We must distinguish between the fly on the chariot and 
the causes of its course. The fault of Napoleon's expedi- 
tion to Eussia was the fortune of England, and it was no 
greatness in the Eegent that gave him the advantage of 
his enemy's running his head against the wall. Domestic 
improvement is to be dated from the suicide of Lord 
Londonderry, but George the Fourth had no part in the 
deed. Before we give luxurious kings the glory of suc- 
cesses which are brought about under their reigns, we 
should, for consistency, accord them divine honours, 
and suppose them to have directed the secondary causes 
and circumstances which have part in great events. 

The mildness of his late Majesty's reign is much com- 
mended, and the circumstance of his not having exercised, 
or expressed any wish to exercise, the prerogative of the 
Crown, except for the relief and advantage of his people. 
This praise also is rather to be placed to the account of 
the character of the times than that of the Sovereign. 
We do not mean to deny that the temper of George IV. 
may have been mild and indulgent ; but, had he been as 
wilfully disposed as the worst of the Stuarts, the spirit of 
the age would have confined his despotic mood to a 
harmless inactivity. 

George the Fourth is praised for the settlement of the 
Catholic question, with about as much justice as he is 
praised for other happy events ; but it is notorious that 
he resisted it as strenuously as consisted with his own 
personal ease, and, after his consent to the measure was 
reluctantly granted, lie endeavoured to thwart his Ministers, 
and encouraged intrigues against their success. Exaspe- 
rated by this conduct, the Puke of Wellington and his 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 77 

colleagues tendered their resignations, and the King was 
obliged to submit, and thenceforth to keep better faith 
with his advisers. We mention this anecdote in point of 
the praised fidelity to engagements. 

On the whole, without any disposition to a severe judg- 
ment, we are inclined to think that the description of 
Voltaire is not very widely inapplicable to George IV.: — 

' Un homme voluptueux, qui ne cherche qu a faire 
grande chere et qui croit que Dieu l'a mis au monde 
pour tenir table.' — (1827). 

WILLIAM IV. 

The best epitaph for William the Fourth would be the 
plain record of the great event and the great service of 
his reign : — He passed the Eeform Bill. In that in- 
scription would be summed up his public merits ; his 
undeniable claims to respect and gratitude. The good 
faith, constancy, and firmness, which he manifested in the 
struggle for Parliamentary Eeform cannot be too highly 
extolled. In that passage of his life, the most important 
passage in the history of our country, he acted the part 
of a Patriot King most honourably, and with a spirit which 
seemed to indicate that his heart was thoroughly in the 
great work. All the praise he then earned is all the 
praise to which he is politically entitled. His patriotic 
dispositions appear to have been exhausted in the improve- 
ment of the representative system ; and, like some of his 
Ministers, after having laboured for the means of in- 
creasing the popular influences, he became alarmed and 
hostile to the necessary and direct effects. 

The King was a professed Liberal before he came to 



78 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

the Throne. Upon his accession, though he did not disturb 
the existing Tory Ministry, he evinced no ordinary appe- 
tite for popularity ; and after the inaccessibility, the 
Eastern seclusion of George IV., the freedom and famili- 
arity of the new King's manners subjected him to the 
unsparing ridicule and contempt of the Tories, who saw 
the ruin of the Monarchy in His Majesty's rambles through 
the streets. 

Upon the overthrow of the Wellington Government, 
William the Fourth played the patriot in the one act of 
Parliamentary Eeform, and then sank, accordantly with 
the natural gravitation of Eoyalty, into the swamp of 
Toryism constituted by that ancient nuisance, the old 
Court of St. James's, which will now, we trust, be thoroughly 
drained. Tory as King William became in his affections 
and wishes, we believe that he had yet the merit of always 
acting with truth and fairness to his Ministers. He would 
have changed them if he could ; he did not pretend that 
they were the men of his choice ; he did not disguise that 
they were forced upon him by the representatives of the 
people : but, while he was obliged to submit to their 
services, he acted with good faith towards them, and they 
had, in His Majesty's conduct, nothing disingenuous or 
subdolous to complain of. 

There does not, indeed, appear to have been anything 
crooked in the character of the late King. He was a man 
of very confined understanding, and of very defective 
education, but thoroughly disposed to do his best, to the 
extent of views dim, prejudiced, or erroneous, as they 
might happen to be. His intellect was not worthy of his 
intentions. Conscientiously he would have pursued the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 79 

most fatal courses, had not the firmness of the Commons 
placed a barrier to his will. He was miserably misled 
by the people about his person, and it was easy to deceive 
him ; as it was distinctly admitted by the Duke of Wel- 
lington, upon the resignation of Lord Grey, in May, 1832, 
that he was so little in communication with public men, 
and so little acquainted with opinions on public affairs, 
that, of all men in the world, he consulted Lord Lynd- 
hurst as to the means of forming an Administration upon 
the principle of an extensive plan of Parliamentary Eeform. 
Knowing so little, or next to nothing, of political life, the 
late King was not only practised upon by artful people, 
but infected with the vain fears of one who knew still 
less than himself, and who was pre-occupied with preju- 
dices that formed a basis for every kind of wild appre- 
hension. The terrors of the Court, real or feigned (and 
we believe there has been about as much of the one as of 
the other), can only be likened to the superstitions which 
used to have sway in darkened nurseries, when nurseries 
were not wiser than Courts. That Mr. O'Connell was 
about to take the crown off the King's head, or that, but 
for Lord Hill in the command of the army, the sentinels 
at the gate of St. James's would have orders to shoot His 
Majesty, were the potent beliefs of the alarmists at St. 
James's. 

Considering the very limited intelligence of the late 
King, and the disadvantageous circumstances in which he 
was placed, all allowance is to be made for his errors : but 
a feature of his character for which no excuse can be 
offered was a want of respect for the feelings of persons 
who happened to be politically obnoxious to him. The 



80 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

privileges of his station he often abused by giving offence 
under them most wantonly and coarsely. Many a man 
of spirit has had to put up with a safe and savage insult 
from the King as the penalty of his votes with the Liberal 
Government ; and this bad habit is not to be referred to 
political disappointments, for, before his late Majesty's 
accession to the throne, he was known to sport with the 
feelings of men rudely and without provocation. Yet the 
late King was generally said to be a good-natured man : 
but we may apply to him the remark that, for a good- 
natured man, he was strangely fond of saying an ill- 
natured thing when objects of his dislike came in his 
way. 

The King contemplated his end with manly composure 
and fortitude. Many amiable traits are recounted of his 
consideration for others in his last moments, and it ap- 
pears that his kindness to those whom he liked is to be 
set off against his incontinence of splenetic speech in the 
opposite case. He was a good friend as well as a good 
hater. His death had the tranquillity of his conscience, 
for he had always acted to the best of his views, mistaken 
and prejudiced as they were apt to be ; and no man could 
pass through the last scene of life with more amiability 
and with more noble fortitude. 

LORD DURHAM. 

The Liberal cause has lost one of the truest friends it 
ever had in Lord Durham. From an early period in life 
he devoted himself heartily to the reformation of abuses 
and the promotion of the rights and due influence of the 
people ; and to the hour of his death lie never swerved 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 81, 

from his principles, or cooled in his zeal for the cause 
which he thought identified with the best interests of the 
country. 

A more consistent career than Lord Durham's can 
hardly be traced in politics. He was not a Eeformer of 
the republican cast. He was sincerely attached to the 
Monarchy, but he occupied as it were the frontier-line of 
Constitutional reform. 

Lord Durham had a great reliance on the good sense 
of the people, and held that, if the error of their opinions 
were explained to them patiently and with kindness, they 
would always be convertible to reasonable views ; and 
few men were better acquainted with the state of the 
country and the feelings of the industrious orders. He 
was not of a sanguine character, and had a great care to 
avoid all self-deception. He did not allow his judgment 
to be influenced by his wishes ; he took very clear and 
long-sighted views, and eminently combined the prophetic 
with the practical statesman. He had a faith in the 
ultimate triumph of right, and used to express his belief 
that the people would succeed in gaining every object 
that they ought to gain. 

His talents were of a high order ; and both in speaking 
and writing he expressed himself with force, conciseness, 
and remarkable luminousness. He had no ambition to 
be brilliant. He aimed at and succeeded in giving the 
clearest expression to good sense, and the clearness of his 
sense might sometimes be mistaken for a more shining 
quality. He spoke seldom and little in the House of Peers, 
for he felt more discouraged than he ought to have allowed 
himself to be by the repugnancy of that assemblage to 

G 



82 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

the opinions lie held. When in the House of Commons, 
he took a more forward and active part ; and those who 
have heard his speeches to assemblies of the people will 
agree that he was eminently successful in such addresses, 
and carried his audience with him without ever stooping 
to vulgar tastes and prejudices. The writer of this paper 
happens to have heard Mr. Lambton's speeches day after 
day from the Durham hustings, during a long- contested 
election ; and never did he hear speeches which so delighted 
immense multitudes so entirely free from any matter dis- 
pleasing to the strictest taste. Mr. Lambton was no 
rhetorician : but he spoke what he believed to be true, 
and what his auditors believed to be true, with manliness, 
simplicity, and earnestness — the quality which makes the 
best part of eloquence. 

The attachment of kindred and friends is the best 
evidence as to private character. The balance of good 
must have been great in a nature so respected and loved 
as Lord Durham has been. 

The ' Times ' disparages Lord Durham's talents, for- 
getting the not more high than just estimate which it 
formed of his abilities in the year '34, when it treated 
the accession of Lord Durham to the Ministry as the one 
thing needful to give resolution and vigour to its counsels. 

No public loss since the death of Canning has caused 
so painful a sensation as that of Lord Durham ; and the 
sorrow for it will extend beyond our own shores. We 
may apply indeed to this loss the words of Tacitus on 
Agricola : Finis vitce ejus nobis luctuosus, amicis tristis, 
extraneis etiam ignotisque non sine curd. — (1840.) 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 83 



LORD HOLLAND. 

It is our mournful duty to record the death of one whom 
we have long looked up to with respectful and affectionate 
regard. The benignant, the accomplished Lord Holland 
is no more. The last and best of the Whigs of the old 
school ; the long-tried friend of religious and civil liberty ; 
the champion of toleration and of the oppressed, has 
closed a life which has been an ornament and a bulwark 
of the Liberal cause. He was one of England's worthies 
in the pristine sense of the word ; and a more finished 
example of the steady statesman, the urbane gentleman, 
and the accomplished scholar, never existed. 

Lord Holland's was a fine mind, and a fine mind in 
perpetual exercise of the most healthy kind. It was 
observed of him that he was never found without a good 
book in his hand. 1 His understanding was thoroughly 
masculine, his taste of a delicacy perhaps approaching 
to a fault. His opinions he maintained earnestly and 
energetically, but with a rare, a beautiful candour. 
Nothing was proscribed with him. As of old the 
meanest wayfarers used to be received hospitably, lest 
angels should be turned away, so Lord Holland seemed 
to have a hearing for every argument lest a truth should 
be shut out from his mind. 

The charm of his conversation will never be forgotten 
by those who have enjoyed it. His mind was full of 

1 Lady Holland, on her husband's death, requested Albany Fonblanque 
to accept one of his favourite books as a memento, and, on his choosing 
Dryden, she wrote : — l As you preferred Dryden, I send you the copy my 
dear lord always liked. You will find some of the volumes in bad condition, 
as he never went any excursion without taking one or two with him.' — (Ed.) 

g2 



84 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

anecdote, which was always introduced with the most 
felicitous appositeness, and exquisitely narrated. Indeed 
his memory seemed to have a spice for every anecdote 
that was laid up in it. 

Lord Holland had lived with all the most distinguished 
and eminent men of the last forty years : but his know- 
ledge of the greatest, the most eloquent, the most witty, 
or the most learned, had not indisposed him to appreciate 
merits and talents of a less great order. He was a friend 
of merit wherever it could be found, and knew how to 
value it and to encourage it in all its degrees. 

None ever enjoyed life more than Lord Holland, or 
enjoyed it more intellectually ; and none ever was more 
contributary to the enjoyment of others. He possessed 
the sunshine of the breast, and no one could approach 
him without feeling its genial influence. 

Lord Holland was a wit without a particle of ill-nature, 
and a man of learning without a taint of pedantry. His 
apprehension of anything good was unfailing, nothing 
worth observing and remembering ever escaped him. 

He was one of those whose opinions had advanced 
with experience, but he looked to the practicable as well 
as to the desirable. He disliked the Ballot, but his 
objections to it were more of a democratic than aristo- 
cratic nature. 

A collection of Lord Holland's protests in the Lords' 
Journals would of itself constitute a monument of his 
labours for every just cause, and in them would be seen 
the soundest Liberal principles most clearly, unflinchingly, 
and energetically expounded. 

The void which Lord Holland has left will never be 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 85 

filled ; a golden link with the genius of the last age is 
broken and gone. The fine intellect whose light burned 
at the shrine of freedom is extinguished. An influence 
the most propitious to the peace so precious to the 
world's best interests is lost, when the need of it is great 
indeed.— (1840.) 

LORD MELBOURNE. 

In the volume recently published, under the title 
f Historical Sketches of Statesmen,' l there is in the appen- 
dix a sketch of Sir Eobert Walpole, who is thus described 
in pp. 362 and 363 : — 'We may now the more distinctly 
perceive the merits of this great statesman ; and we shall 
easily admit that he was one of the ablest, wisest, safest 
rulers, who ever bore sway in this country. Inferior to 
many in qualities that dazzle the multitude, and under- 
valuing the mere outward accomplishments of English 
statesmanship, nay, accounting them as merits only so far 
as they conduced to parliamentary and to popular influence, 
and even much undervaluing their effects in that direction, 
Walpole yet ranks in the very highest class of those whose 
unvarying prudence, clear apprehension, fertility of re- 
sources to meet unexpected difficulties, firmness of purpose, 
just and not seemingly exaggerated self-confidence, point 
them out by common consent as the men qualified to guide 
the course of human affairs,, to ward off public dangers, 
and to watch over the peace of empires.' To which the 
following note is added : — ' It is gratifying to me that I 
can conscientiously rank Lord Melbourne among those 
to whom this description applies in most of its essential 

1 By Lord Brougham. 



8G BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

points. His faults belong to others — his merits are his 
own.' 

We give a place to this tribute because the intention of 
it is good, not that we think the sketch of Walpole very 
successful, nor the likeness of Lord Melbourne to it very 
exact. There are points in which the praise needs quali- 
fying, and points in which it falls far short of the truth. 1 
Lord Melbourne's, indeed, is a character not to be hit off 
in a few generalities ; it is very difficult to draw. We 
doubt whether anyone knows it who has not mistaken it 
more than once ; mistaken its depths for shallows, its 
sound for slighter parts ; and, if even the mistaken is an 
admiring view, the corrected is a loftier appreciation. 
Had Lord Melbourne's fortune been differently cast, had 
he been doomed to fag at the bar for a subsistence, either 
to succeed or to starve, he would have been a great 
lawyer. What he might have been in the Church, we 
may infer from the fact that he has more theological 
learning than half the bench of Bishops. In any province 
of intellectual labour he had capacity for eminence. Ab- 
surdly misrepresented as a Sybarite, his mind is of a turn 
and temper for the driest studies. By superficial observers 
he has been taken for a trifler, for no better reason than 
because he trifles so well ; but who in the next breath 
reasons more acutely, who philosophizes more deeply, who 
brings readier and ampler knowledge to bear on any 

1 Nothing was more marked in the character of Albany Fonblanqne than 
his constant desire to hold the scales of justice with an even hand. Wri ting- 
to Mr. Forster on the death of Lord Melbourne, with whom he had lived on 
terms of private friendship, he says, 1 1 have my hands full of Lord M.'s 
character, about which I am the more anxious from the cruel disparagement 
on the one hand, and the indiscriminating laudations on the other.' — (Ed.) 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 87 

> question that arises ? His position behind the scenes 
of the great theatre has exposed him to one error common 
to almost all superior men in the same place of observation : 
a disbelief or underrating of the better motives of man- 
kind. A Prime Minister sees so much of the bad side of 
human nature that he can hardly believe, as much as he 
should, in the good. The error, however pointedly satire 
may plead in mitigation, is one which makes an important 
element of miscalculation and misjudgment. 

Unlike Walpole, Lord Melbourne has retired from office 
without taking any of the signs of honour ; and none could 
he have sought or accepted without descending from his 
true rank and dignity in the world's eyes. For seven years 
he dispensed titles and distinctions, and it was not for him 
who bestowed to receive such things. None of the gauds 
stuck to his fingers. He left power, as he came to it, 
without having derived from it any additions to his own 
state, except the esteem in the. heart of his Sovereign, 
whose first steps under the weight of the crown he guided 
with an anxious care which would be imperfectly expressed 
by any word but paternal ; and the attachment and respect 
of all who had opportunities of knowing the frankness, the 
uprightness, the high honourable bearing which marked 
his conduct throughout his official career. Such a servant 
needed no outward sign of his Sovereign's favour, and no 
verbal title to a people's honour. — (1843.) 



When Napoleon made himself Emperor, Paul Louis 
Courier's lieutenant remarked that he was made for 
something greater. William Lamb, clever and accom- 



88 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

plishecl as lie was, was made for something greater than a . 
viscount's coronet, or for something greater than fortune's 
favours indulged him in being. The one thing needful 
and wanting in him was the spur to exertion. Had he 
been born to bread-and-cheese, he would have risen to the 
top of whatever profession he had made his choice. His 
capacity was of the highest order, but there was something 
which prevented its full development ; not indolence, 
though it bore the appearance of indolence ; but the 
ruling idea that nothing was worth its trouble, the non 
tanti answering to too many a suggestion. Whenever 
this miscalculation was overruled by the force of circum- 
stances or the necessities of position, Lord Melbourne 
evinced no lack of energy and application ; and had 
fortune placed his lot where labour is the habit, instead 
of a question of the worth-while, he would have added 
to the many brilliant examples so eloquently described in 
the lines of Savage, 

Strong as necessity, he starts away, 

Climbs against wrongs, and brightens into day. 

The extensive reading of Lord Melbourne refutes the 
notion that he was an idle man, and bears out our belief 
that it was not indolence that stood in the way of exertion 
with him, but the prevailing habit of distrusting the value 
of objects and exertions. This impediment was of course 
inoperative when the business was to please and inform 
his own mind ; and hence he was a great reader, and in 
all provinces of literature, not excepting the most arid. 
He was reputed a man of pleasure by those who saw his 
idle moments, without in his idle moments perceiving also 
the evidences and fruits of hours of study and reflection ; 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 80 



but, if he is to be classed as a man of pleasure, the highest 
intellectual researches must have made the most part of 
his pleasure. 

Sydney Smith had penetration enough to see that Lord 
Melbourne was not the indolent man supposed, but only 
wanting motive for exertion ; and in one of his pleasant 
pieces of banter (aptly quoted by a daily contemporary) he 
imagines him passing a night in mastering the undignified 
and distasteful business of a deputation on the morrow. 

Lord Melbourne's administration of the Home Office 
was not, as has been represented, faineant. It was ener- 
getic, firm, and spirited when occasion required, and the 
fault we found with it at the time was on the side of severe 
precaution, not certainly of negligence and inertness. 

His elevation to the head of affairs in '34 was, it is said, 
a surprise to the public ; but it does not thence follow that 
the choice was an unfit one. Mr. Pepys' advancement to 
the woolsack was another surprise, and now the only 
surprise is that it was a surprise. Lord Melbourne was 
exactly the man for holding others together, and this 
William IV. had the sagacity to perceive ; and in the 
then circumstances of the Liberal party we doubt whether 
anyone else could have preserved the concord necessary 
to the existence of the Government for a session. 

Upon the accession of Her Majesty a new duty devolved 
on Lord Melbourne, which he performed with a zeal and 
judgment beyond all praise. He had the guardianship, 
as it were, and the guidance of a girl, upon whose young 
head had descended all the responsibilities and tempta- 
tions of sovereignty. He had to direct her youthful steps 
at their giddy eminence, and to surround her with the 



90 BIOGBAPUICAL SKETCHES. 

defences of wise counsel. How lie performed his task we 
have seen in the matchless conduct of our monarch under 
all the trying circumstances in which she has been placed, 
and through all which Her Majesty has passed without 
swerving an iota from the high path of the Constitution. 
This service, which has so benefited the country in the 
different crises which have occurred in our party embar- 
rassments, and which will continue to benefit it, we trust, 
for many many years to come, was at this period not 
without actual detriment to Lord Melbourne in his position 
as a statesman. His anxieties about the Court necessarily 
withdrew much of his attention from the affairs of the 
Ministry, and left it too much a Government of Depart- 
ments wanting often unity in counsel and concert in its 
proceedings. And when, interrogated as to secondary 
matters of detail, Lord Melbourne was found unprepared 
to answer, he was reproached for negligence ; the truth 
being that he was engrossed by cares of really greater and 
more permanent importance. 

It is well known that the Queen, who had so profited 
by Lord Melbourne's guidance, was fully sensible of the 
merits of her servant, and requited them with an attach- 
ment almost filial. But never did Lord Melbourne turn 
this kindness of his sovereign to any account but that of 
her own service. He held Her Majesty's favour in trust for 
uses directed to the honour and welfare of the Throne, and 
never turned it to party or personal objects. 

He served two sovereigns, and he retired into private 
life without availing himself of their well-merited favour 
to acquire for himself either honours or title. As to 
honours, lie was contented with the honour of having 



BIOGIZAPHICAL SKETCHES. 91 

guided with undeviating integrity the early footsteps of a 
youthful Queen, who, aided by his wise counsels, passed, 
with a steadiness and judgment beyond her years, through 
the trying transition from comparative seclusion to the 
throne of a mighty empire. As to titles, he was satisfied 
with having established an indisputable title to the 
esteem of his sovereign, and to the respect and gratitude 
of his country. 

There have been few men more popular than Lord 
Melbourne was in all circles ; not that his manners were 
courtier-like — they were abrupt, brusque, careless ; but 
his manly frankness, and, to borrow a phrase from Leigh 
Hunt, * the handsome solidity of his character ' pleased all, 
and there was a raciness in his conversation and a glee in 
his mirth which were indescribably charming. In society 
he never played the great man, nor did he unbend, for he 
was never bent, never strung up, always unaffected, easy, 
and natural, yet preserving an innate dignity so much felt 
by all that no liberty was ever invited by his familiarity. 
He liked, however, to startle people, particularly if they 
exhibited any sort of coxcombry or quackery ; in which 
case he would fling out something to throw them off their 
balance, some paradox challenging their pretensions, and 
exhibiting their incapacity of self-defence. He had great 
penetration in reading character, and was most felicitous 
in hitting it off in a few words, going straight to the 
key foible, or the feature of merit, whichever prevailed. 
It must, however, be admitted that there was the error in 
his views of too great an incredulity as to purity. of motives, 
and that he did not give the world credit for as much 
virtue as is in it, with all its faults, vices, and hypocrisies. 



92 J3I0GBAPEICAL SKETCHES. 

A Prime Minister's position brings meanness to his feet 
which he must not mistake for the world's stratum. A 
French critic observes of Napoleon that one of his great 
faults was not believing in virtue, which caused him to 
make very misleading calculations as to men and their 
actions. Let the amount of virtue be estimated as it may, 
more or less ; still it must ever be a great element not to 
be overlooked without vitiating all calculations respecting 
the conduct and motives of men. 

If Lord Melbourne's disposition to distrust led him 
occasionally into errors in estimating the characters of 
others, it also caused him to do some injustice to his own ; 
for to avoid the appearance of claiming credit for acts of 
generosity or beneficence, he would often assign motives 
very much lower than those that really influenced him. 
In this respect he was like Goldsmith's Gentleman in Black 
in the ' Citizen of the World,' who performs acts of the 
purest charity and benevolence, giving reasons for them 
of a harsh or calculating nature. This preference of 
self-disparagement to the possible suspicion or imputation 
of humbug or cant, is the dissimulation of goodness, the 
fault opposite to hypocrisy, but a fault still, though not 
of alarming frequency. The failing of making too light 
of one's good deeds is not the propensity of the present 
age, or chargeable against any past time. 

As a politician, Lord Melbourne was essentially Con- 
servative, but Conservative without prejudice, Conservative 
without superstition ; Conservative not in sticking to the 
horse-shoe nailed on the threshold of the Constitution, but 
Conservative by timely reparations, Conservative by 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 93 

guarding against decay and by adaptations to time and 
circumstances. 

He was not an orator ; the display of a set, studied 
speech being distasteful to him, and there being some 
hesitation in his delivery — a sort of stammer, not referrible, 
as we believe, to any defect in the organs of articulation, 
but to nervousness, the effects of which appeared in his 
emotions as well as in his language, and indicate the 
source of the malady that proved fatal. 

If, out of the fulness of the head, the tongue spoke as it 
does out of the fulness of the heart, Lord Melbourne 
should have been one of the very best speakers of his 
time; but the very fulness of his mind was against the 
delivery, for, as Montaigne observes, 'there are minds 
which are like full bottles, which, when reversed, will 
not pour out their contents because there is so much in 
them that in the jostle there is a difficulty of escape/ 
But, though not an orator, Lord Melbourne had great 
felicities as a speaker, and no one could make a point 
more tersely and racily. In sarcasm, too, he evinced a 
power which would have been formidable, but for the 
moderation which governed it and forbade the exercise 
except on extraordinary provocation. He hit with his 
shining keen rapier without pushing it home to a wound. 
How happy was his reply to an attack of Lord Brougham, 
who had commenced by reciting what his conduct had 
been to the Ministry — how in the first year of its existence 
he had given it his support — that in the second, unable 
to support it, he had absented himself, and so forth. Lord 
Melbourne, in answer, repeated his assailant's commemo- 



94 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

rations, and expressed his gratitude, thanking the noble 
and learned lord in due order for his support in the first 
year, and still more cordially for his absence in the second 
year. 

Another stroke to the same enemy was in reply to 
Lord Brougham's attack on Lord Normanby's Irish ad- 
ministration, which, as it was atrociously unjust, wound 
up with a laboured eulogium on the virtue of justice. ' It 
undoubtedly,' said Lord Melbourne, ' was a most brilliant 
passage, but he thought he had heard some of it before. 
He alluded particularly to that part where he spoke of a 
vacillating House of Commons, a venal House of Lords, 
and a corrupt and ambitious Ministry, and of the power 
of justice overcoming them all. No doubt these were fine 
expressions ; they put him in mind, however, of Sheridan's 
celebrated eulogium on the liberty of the Press ; but they 
were by no means the icorse for that' 

Nothing can be happier than that concluding • salvo 
on the plagiarism : ' they were by no means the worse 
for that.' It is the nonchalant, easy tilt of the hilt, 
dropping the man, run through the body, off the sword. A 
coarse antagonist would have pinned him; Lord Melbourne 
let him fall. 

Another memorable hit was that to Lord Lyndhurst, 
when he applied to him the reproach addressed by an old 
worthy to a similar character as to talents, whereof God 
had bestowed the gift, the Devil the application. 

We could quote many other specimens of a happy wit 
accompanied with a not less happy temper. Indeed, of 
our time, few men have left behind them a greater number 
of memorable sayings, public and private, than Lord 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 95 

Melbourne. The place lie leaves in society will never be 
filled, for lie was of a most original stamp, without a 
particle of alloy of the commonplace or the conventional. 
It could not be said of him that he was the wit amongst 
lords, and the lord amongst wits. In company with the 
best, with Sydney and Bobus Smith, with Macaulay, with 
Luttrel and Eogers, he held his own ; and, the more 
brilliant the talents present, the more he shone amongst 
them by ready knowledge and ready wit. 

In this imperfect appreciation of a very remarkable 
character, we have not refrained from noticing what we 
believe to have been its faults, feeling that truth without 
reserve is the greatest homage to worth, and that well 
can Lord Melbourne's character afford the admission of 
the failings belonging to it in common with all humanity. 
As Tacitus proposes for the due honour of Agricola, 
siinilitudine decoremus. Most applicable to Lord Mel- 
bourne is the description of our great poet : 

Statesman, yet friend to truth, of soul sincere, 
In action faithful, and in honour clear ; 
Who broke no promise, served no private end ; 
"Who gained no title, and who lost no friend. 

(1848.) 

MR. JOHN WALTER. 

We have the melancholy duty of recording the death of 
Mr. John Walter, the chief proprietor and manager of 
the ' Times ' newspaper. The man who founded that 
great power, and brought its complicated machinery to 
the perfection we now witness, could be no ordinary man ; 
and his most eloquent monument is the mighty engine he 
leaves behind him. A history of Mr. Walter would 
embody a history of the improvement of the daily press. 



96 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

The judgment with which he conducted the affairs of his 
journal was consummate ; and all who have ever been 
connected with it bear testimony to the generous, the 
liberal, and considerate treatment they received. We 
differed from many of Mr. Walter's views, but we never 
could do him the injustice of denying his benevolence. 
He was sincerely the poor man's friend ; and, whether 
rich or poor were concerned, the love of justice always 
actuated him, and its spirit has pervaded his paper, and 
marked it with a high purpose worked out with a talent 
worthy of so noble a cause. To admit est ubi peccat, is 
only to concede that there may be occasional miscarriage 
in the best and loftiest aim. All who had the advantage 
of Mr. Walter's acquaintance were impressed by the true 
liberality and kindness of his disposition; and he had 
the friendship and esteem of men whose friendship and 
esteem are not lightly earned. — (1847.) 

MR. JOHX HUNT. 1 

In our obituary of last week appeared the death of Mr. 
John Hunt, the brother of the admired poet and essayist, 
Leigh Hunt, by whom conjointly this journal was founded, 
and for many years conducted. Mr. John Hunt had not 
the brilliant gifts and talents of his accomplished brother ; 
but his abilities were good, his understanding solid, and 
his taste of the very highest order. In moral character 
lie was a man of a rare stamp : an honester never breathed. 
His devotion to truth and justice had no bounds ; there 
was no peril, no suffering, that he was not ready to en- 
counter for either. With resolution and fortitude not to 

1 See Memoir, page 23. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 97 

be surpassed, he was one of the gentlest and kindest of 
beings. His own sufferings were the only sufferings to 
which he could be indifferent. His part as a Eeformer in 
the worst times was unflinching, and he held his course 
undauntedly when bold truths were visited with the pen- 
alties of the prison, which he knew how to face and how 
to endure. His way through the world was a rough one, 
but his constancy was even, and tribulations left him un- 
shaken. He was at arm's length with care throughout 
the active part of his life, but never mastered by it, for 
his goodness had a bravery in it which always bore him 
up. Fortune's buffets, of which he had a full share, left 
no bruises on him, and extorted no murmurs. We never 
heard him repine ; seldom, on the other hand, had he 
occasion to rejoice, and never for long. He took what- 
ever befell him, calmly, as his portion, and with a manly 
yet sweet resignation. His faults lay on the side of tena- 
city and prepossession : when he had taken up a cause or 
a quarrel, it was hard to alter his view of the merits by 
fact or argument ; and he was sometimes misled, by his 
sympathy with the weaker, to fight the battle not really of 
the more righteous, but of the worsted party. Having taken 
the field when power was carrying every injustice with a 
high hand, he was apt to believe it afterwards in the wrong 
whenever called in question. But these errors were few, 
and might have been fewer still had they been less detri- 
mental to his interests. There never was a question in 
John Hunt's mind as to the side to be taken in any dis- 
cussion but the question of justice, which he determined 
to the best of his judgment, acting upon the conclusion 
at all risks. Unconscious prejudice might enter into his 

H 



98 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

views occasionally : but they were honest, according to 
his lights ; and in the days of martyrdom a martyr he 
would cheerfully have been for what he deemed the 
truth. John Hunt never put forth a claim of any kind 
on the world. He had fought the battle in the front 
ranks when the battle was the hottest : but he passed into 
retirement in the very hour of victory as if he had done 
nothing, and deserved nothing of the triumphant cause. 
The ever-kind Lord Holland, however, did not forget 
him. He procured an appointment in the West Indies 
for one of his sons, an excellent young man, who was 
doing well and promising to be a stay for his father's old 
age, when he was suddenly cut off by one of the diseases 
of the climate. 

Although many profited by the services of John Hunt 
in the Press, to few was the height of his merits known, 
shadowed as they were by his modesty ; but by those 
who knew them, profoundly are they prized, and affec- 
tionately is he mourned. — (1848.) 

LORD GEORGE BENTIXCK. 

Lord George Bentinck's character may be summed up 
in one word : he was a man of purpose. He was not a 
man of much talent ; he was not eloquent ; far from it ; his 
manner was so unhappy that it was painful to hear him 
speak ; he was not possessed of any high powers of argu- 
ment ; he had no one faculty much above mediocrity, 
and he had deficiencies of considerable magnitude ; but 
to supply all that was wanting and all that was weak, and 
to make the most of what was strong, he had earnestness, 
he had aim, he had constancy, he had indefatigable perse- 



BIOGBAPEICAL SKETCHES. 99 

verance. He was not the man ever to know despair or 
discouragement. He seemed cast to stand in a breach. 
He had, in rare perfection, the unconsciousness of defeat 
assigned by Napoleon to the English character. He knew 
when he was out-voted, but not when he was worsted in 
debate ; and he was consequently always fresh and full of 
confidence to begin the encounter again. He was not 
an adversary of much prowess ; he wielded no mighty 
arms, and those which he did wield were wielded with 
no extraordinary dexterity or skill ; but nevertheless he 
was a most harassing foe, ever active and on the watch 
for exposed points. He was wrong nineteen times out of 
twenty, perhaps ; but he multiplied the number of attacks 
so as in the long run to make the hits tell out of the 
misses. 

How he rallied and headed the Protectionists, after the 
conversion of Sir Eobert Peel to Free Trade, is in recent- 
recollection ; it was a gallant service to an ungrateful 
cause. Lord George had his liberal views apart from 
questions of commercial policy, and they made him dis- 
trusted and disliked by his party, which also found fault with 
the passionate sallies emanating from the very vehemence 
which constituted the strength of his character. They did 
not take him for better for worse ; they had not the 
shrewdness to perceive that to reduce him to the prudences 
and proprieties would be to reduce him to zero, and that 
to have the advantage of his purpose and earnestness many 
excesses must be compounded for. They were dissatisfied 
that he had not those qualities of a Peel, which, had he 
possessed them, would in all human probability have 
caused him to train off with Peel. 



I 

100 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



We believe that Lord George Bentinck was a thoroughly 
honest man according to his views, but very distorted and 
confused was the medium through which he surveyed 
objects. Seeing things exaggerated and discoloured, his 
mind inflamed upon them, chafing and heating upon its 
own errors. He had, as it were, hysteric fits of virtuous 
indignation, the subject matter of which was sheer mis- 
conception. But this was not without its success with the 
uninquiring part of the public, who, seeing the much ado 
about nothing, sagely concluded that c there could not be 
so much smoke without some fire.' 

If the home question be asked, What would Lord 
George Bentinck's position and repute have been if he 
had been a poor plebeian instead of the rich son of a ducal 
house ? the best answer is a reference to the secondary 
place which Mr. Disraeli has occupied, he being a man of 
genius, of acquirements, and of brilliant talents for debate. 
In all the qualifications for public life Mr. Disraeli in- 
comparably surpassed Lord G. Bentinck, but the aristo- 
cratic position placed the inferior man uppermost. One 
superiority, however, belonged to Lord George : he was 
sincere. For how much his sincerity would have told, 
if he had not been a rich lord, we are not prepared to 
say. 

We have too often had to observe on Lord George 
Bentinck's fierce and unjust personal attacks : but we are 
disposed to ascribe much that lias been placed to the 
account of rancour to confusion of understanding. He 
took a false view, and then raged against the error that 
was not in the object, but in his way of looking at it. 
His fancied forte was in grappling with facts; but finger- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 101 

ing facts is not grappling with them, nor is seeing a phase 
of them the same thing as embracing their significance. 
Hence statistics were a quagmire in which Lord George 
was perpetually floundering. Often he perplexed himself, 
and then complained that he had been perplexed, the con- 
fusing account having been rendered according to his own 
express direction. The explanation is, that he took to public 
business rather late in life, and that, not having had the 
gradual initiation into details, he plunged into them and 
was overwhelmed by them, as anyone must be, so dealing 
with matters beyond his comprehension. 

The fault of Lord George, for which not a word of 
palliation can be offered, was insolence. He treated all 
who happened to be the objects of his displeasure as 
criminals divested of any claims to consideration or respect. 
The lord in his anger was not the gentleman. 

SIR ROBERT PEEL. 

We have seen the extinction of many of the world's 
lights, but the gloom which has followed the loss of Sir 
Eobert Peel we have never before witnessed. We well 
remember the anxiety and alarm about Canning in his 
last illness, in whom were centred so many bright hopes 
and the admiration of all ; but much more general and 
intense has been the feeling for Sir Eobert Peel — the 
affectionate solicitude while there was yet hope, and the 
genuine sorrow when the sad truth that all was over 
went forth. The bereavement is mourned as a national 
misfortune. We have lost a statesman who has rendered 
the greatest services to his country, and who was hardly 
less necessary for our future than he has been instru- 



102 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

mental to good in the past. His post for the last four 
years was that of both moderator and guard ; to protect 
the working party against interruption, and the system in 
their charge against any attempts to undo or impair it. 
The very enmity which so rancorously attached to him 
contributed to his success in this undertaking ; for it 
preferred expending itself upon him personally, to the 
objects over which he extended his shield. In the storms 
of faction he attracted its forked lightnings, and with 
results harmless to himself while saving to others. He 
was indeed, in the phrase of Homer, a bulwark of the 
war ; and his merit in filling that post is the greater 
when it is considered that the obloquy to which he 
so manfully exposed himself for the protection of the 
common cause was not without pains, and peculiar pains 
to him ; for Sir Eobert Peel was of a very sensitive nature, 
and tenacious of respect ; and most poignantly would he 
have felt the taunts and insults heaped upon him, if he 
had not been fortified in encountering them by the sense 
of a lofty and imperative duty. Yet the calmness and 
equanimity which he showed under the bitterest attacks 
must have cost him much ; and the greater the honour 
for the inflexibility with which he held to his course, not 
deviating a jot to abate or propitiate the wrath of his 
virulent and unsparing opponents. 

In reviewing the conduct of Sir Eobert Peel it must 
always be borne in mind that he was educated in the 
Tory faith, and at a very early age officially enlisted in 
its service. But just as he advanced in life, and as 
experience corrected prepossessions, he saw reason to 
drop opinion after opinion, and to adopt opposite views. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 103 

•* , 

These changes were not rapid, but they were always in 
steady though slow progress. And, when he had obtained 
perception of a great truth, he embraced it without 
reservation, and in all its bearings. He was not a man of 
half-and-half measures. Whatever he undertook he ac- 
complished completely, for his convictions seem to have 
had a strength in proportion to the slowness of their 
growth, and his action corresponded with them in mature 
vigour. 

His great measures need no recital, their merit no 
eulogy ; the motives only call for remark, as great incon- 
sistencies were undeniably involved. And had Sir Eobert 
Peel's life closed a few years ago, his motive for Catholic 
Emancipation would have seemed to us at least doubtful, 
for there were ulterior party conveniences as well as 
a present personal compromise in that step ; but the 
motives which, separately considered, might be question- 
able, must be cleared up by the motives which are beyond 
all suspicion ; and all that may have been equivocal in 
Sir Eobert Peel's conduct we read now clearly and 
unmistakably by the broad context of his sacrifices on 
the Corn question. In '41 he was in the highest position 
that any party-man ever held. Ten years before he had 
been defeated, his followers routed and dispersed; he 
had rallied them, recruited them, sagely instructed them 
not to attempt to undo what was done, but to accept the 
past, and make the best of the new constitution. The 
end was that he overthrew the Melbourne Government 
on Protectionist principles, and came into power with a 
commanding and a sure majority. Within three years 
he had to choose between the breaking up of his party 



104 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

and power, and the continuance of the restrictive system, 
which he had discovered to be injurious and unjust, and 
which, with impending famine, threatened cruel sufferings 
and proportionably grave dangers. His duty determined 
his line of conduct promptly, firmly, and courageously. 
He looked to the public interests, and provided for them 
reckless of any personal or party cost. He broke up 
his party, he threw himself from power, he unfettered 
commerce and industry, and opened the channels of 
plenty to the poor. He then descended, if descent we 
can call it, to the position of a private independent 
member, shorn of much of the mighty influence he had 
once possessed, but retaining still a considerable share, 
and using it for purposes the most disinterested and the 
most patriotic. We say that the noble motives for this 
last great passage in Sir Eobert Peel's life must fairly be 
taken to construe motives for other changes which have 
been matter of doubt and suspicion. When charged 
with the affairs of the country, we sincerely believe that 
the conscientious sense of duty was ever his sole rule of 
action, according to the best of his judgment, right or 
wrong. But we have often had occasion to observe that 
he was avowedly lax when not under the obligations of 
office, and that in opposition he seized advantages too 
eagerly, and for the sake of a triumph of dexterity. 
But here it is to be remembered that the atmosphere of 
Sir Eobert Peel's life had been the Parliamentary arena ; 
that its arts of warfare, its manoeuvres, its stratagems, 
were his second nature ; and his skill in the game 
tempted him to take the advantages within the conven- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 105 

tional rules of the fair play of party, which are perhaps 
of too great a width. But this license he could not be 
charged with since his last descent from power, during 
which time, with one solitary exception, his conduct was 
shaped solely with regard to the protection or promotion 
of the great public objects to which he had devoted him- 
self, at the sacrifice of every ambition but the ambition 
of earning a nation's gratitude. 

About the measure of Sir Kobert Peel's greatness there 
may be difference of opinion, though none that he was 
a great man. He is not perhaps to be classed amongst 
the men of genius, nor of the best order of eloquence : 
but he had many talents of a very high order, backed 
with great industry, dexterity in business, and the faculty 
of adaptation, which is so effective in a popular assembly. 
Whatever the estimate of him may be, it cannot fairly 
refuse him a noble place amongst England's worthies and 
benefactors. 

Sir Kobert Peel was all in all a public man. That he 
was unexceptionable in domestic relations is notorious ; 
but he had no social position apart and different from his 
public one. It has been said, indeed, in the off-hand 
language of the world, that he had no personal friends ; 
but the feeling on his death discloses that his personal 
friends were the general public. He must, however, have 
possessed qualities to please society, whether he cared to 
exert them or not ; for he had humour and a keen per- 
ception of the ludicrous, which he often used with happy 
effect in Parliament. But in the House of Commons he 
was more at home than in the dining-room or drawing- 



106 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

room ; indeed, his life seems to have been divided between 
the strictly public and the strictly domestic, in both of 
which his memory will long be honoured and loved. 

The last service he has rendered to his country is the 
posthumous one of the example (so encouraging to the 
honest discharge of duty) of the gratitude and generous 
appreciation which await a long account of great services 
against which no set-off of passing or petty errors is 
allowed. ' How can I see faults,' said the eloquent 
French critic on a deep tragedy, ' when my tears blind 
me?' 

The tributes to the worth of Sir Eobert Peel in the 
Houses of Parliament have corresponded with the general 
sentiment. Lord Lansdowne expressed his sense of the 
loss in some words of deep feeling ; the Duke of Welling- 
ton, the ' Iron Duke,' the ' hero of a hundred fights,' 
could not be heard for tears. The little he said in praise 
of his friend, interrupted as it was by emotions of grief, 
was characteristic of his own noble simplicity. He dwelt 
not on Sir Eobert Peel's intellectual qualities, nor on the 
great things he had done, but on his truth, his devotion 
to the public service, and his undeviating sincerity. The 
tribute so rendered by such a man is profoundly touching, 
and brings the public heart to heart with the speaker. 

Lord John Eussell, in the other House, gave unaffected 
expression to his sentiments of respect and sorrow, and 
bore emphatic testimony to the patriotism of the departed 
statesman. He naturally alluded to the acknowledgment 
he had so lately had to make of the assistance which 
Sir Eobert Peel had given to the Government, couched 
in these words, now so memorable : 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 107 



1 We have endeavoured to carry on the Government of 
this country, both with regard to its domestic and its 
foreign relations, in times of great danger, in such a 
manner as that there should not be any disturbance of 
the tranquillity, of the peace, of the progress of industry 
in this country, and at the same time to propose from 
time to time such improvements as it seemed to us might 
be safely adopted. In that course we have received, I 
fully admit, the cordial and constant support of the right 
hon. gentleman (Sir R. Peel). He, no doubt, on consider- 
ing the course that we adopted, found that that course 
was consonant to what he believes to be the true interests 
of the country ; but, nevertheless, I feel an obligation to 
him for the manner in which he has given that support, 
giving it freely, giving it frankly, and at the same time 
never attempting to show that it was by his support that 
the majority of this House were induced to uphold the 
measures of the Government.' 

Mr. Goulburn declined the offered honour of a public 
funeral for Sir Eobert Peel, stating that he had expressed 
a wish, only six weeks ago, that his body should be laid 
in the parish church of Drayton without parade and 
ostentation, the prohibition of which he had admired and 
approved in the express directions- of the Dowager Queen 
for her funeral. 

No such pageant is needed in this case. The funeral 
honours have been rendered by the heart of the country. 
In the beautiful lines on the burial of Moore, we have 
always thought of most eloquent significance the few 
simple words, ' and we bitterly thought of the morrow.' 
And how many minds now think with heaviness of the 



108 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

coming time in which the departed statesman's guiding 
care and helping offices will be wanting. — (1850.) 

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON". 

' Know thyself,' said the Greek sage, and few men have 
excelled the Duke of Wellington in this point of wisdom. 
He was in the secret of his own grand successes, could 
count and measure the steps by which he had mounted 
to his superiorities, and distinguish and define the qualities 
which had ministered to his fortune and to his country's 
service. First amongst his advantages he accounted his 
exact knowledge of the mechanism of an army. It was 
an instrument every part of which he was acquainted with, 
and every want of which he was experienced in supplying. 
He had graduated in the learning of this instrument from 
the part of subaltern to that of Commander-in-Chief in the 
school of Indian warfare, which exacts an amount of care 
and skill far exceeding what is required in European cam- 
paigns. A good Indian general must especially have a 
thorough comprehension of the business of the Commis- 
sariat. To use his army he must know how to feed it, 
and to transport its material ; and of this main business the 
Duke was a perfect master. From the plains of Hindostan 
to the fields of Portugal and Spain, Sir Arthur Wellesley 
carried the combination in his own person of all the expe- 
rience and skill requisite for the direction and sustenance 
of an army. He was not dependent on the efficiency of 
any subordinates in any province of duty. No one could 
tell him that this or that could not be done ; and he could 
detect at once any error or imperfection in the performance 
of any service. He was a soldier of all work, from the shape 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 109 

of a camp kettle to the plan of a pitched battle. With 
every detail he was familiar, and he could direct the Com- 
missariat as accurately as he could manoeuvre a regiment 
or marshal a host in battle array. The great Captains to 
whom he was opposed might be his superiors in particular 
branches of military science : but none combined so various, 
extensive, and precise a knowledge of the instrument he 
wielded, and its capabilities. Both Nelson and Wellington 
were accomplished craftsmen in their respective provinces 
as well as warriors ; and, as the one could handle a ship at 
least as well as any captain under him, so the other could 
perform the part of Adjutant-general, Quartermaster- 
general, or Commissary-general. In this knowledge of all 
details lay his advantage over Napoleon himself, who with 
his transcendent skill in moving great masses, and working 
out the grand combinations of war, had not the same 
familiar acquaintance with the anatomy, the limbs and 
joints he was setting in motion. In French phrase he 
worked in block. His genius seized upon the thing to be 
done, without the method of doing it, which was left to 
subordinates. Working so lavishly, reckless of blood 
and treasure, with vast means, Napoleon did wonders ; and 
working most economically, with scanty means, on a differ- 
ent system, combining the perception of what was to be 
done with the perfect knowledge of how it was to be 
done, Wellington triumphed over his colossal adversary. 

The Duke was never heard to disparage an opponent. 
Indeed, his generous appreciation of the merits of the 
great Captains he had encountered and mastered once 
provoked the bold question how he accounted for his own 
triumph over such men. He hesitated for a moment to 



110 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

reply, and the interrogator felt all the temerity of the 
question he had put ; but the Duke relieved him presently 
by quietly saying : ' Their plans may have been better than 
mine ; but in the execution of every large plan there is 
likely to be some miscarriage, and I think I had the knack 
of readjusting my arrangements to new circumstances more 
quickly than they had, and perhaps for the very reason 
that the original plan was not so perfect, and the mending 
by so much the more easy, as you can knot broken rope 
more easily than leather harness.' 

The Duke spoke with great respect, or rather admiration, 
of the skill of Soult in organising troops and combining 
their movements : but with this faculty his praise stopped. 
For genius in war he gave the palm to Massena, in this 
criticism of personal experience : — ' When Massena was 
opposed to me I could not eat, drink, or sleep. I never 
knew what repose or respite from anxiety was. I was 
kept perpetually on the alert. Bat when Soult was op- 
posed to me, then I could eat, drink, sleep, and enjoy 
myself without fear of surprise. Not but that Soult was 
a great general. Soult was a wonderful man in his way. 
Soult would assemble a hundred thousand men at a cer- 
tain point, on a certain day, but when he had got them 
there he did not know what in the world to do with 
them.' 

The Duke would not be drawn into comparisons dispar- 
aging foreign armies and exalting our own at their expense. 
George IV. asked him whether the British cavalry was not 
the finest in the world. The Duke answered, ' The French 
are very good, Sir.' Onsatisfied with this sufficiently sig- 
nificant evasion of the question, the King rejoined, 'But 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. Ill 

ours is better, Duke ? ■ ' The French are very good, Sir,' 
was again the Duke's dry response. No vulgar vaunt of 
superiority could be obtained from him. 

The Duke had the simplicity which is almost uniformly 
the concomitant of genius. Some time ago was exhibited 
a model of the battle of Waterloo, which the Duke recom- 
mended a lady to visit, saying, ' It is a very exact model 
of the battle to my certain knowledge, for I was there 
myself' As if there could be a being beyond the greenest 
infancy needing to be told who fought the battle of 
Waterloo. It was for the modesty of the Duke alone to 
ignore his own all-pervading fame. 

Eeaders of that valuable work, Colonel Gurwood's ' Col- 
lection of the Wellington Despatches ' (a book which will 
be turned to now with new and infinitely increased 
interest), must be aware that the Duke of Wellington was 
a thorough reformer in military affairs, and that, during the 
long course of the Peninsular campaigns, he was engaged 
in a perpetual struggle against the abuses of patronage, 
and jobs of every sort impairing the efficiency of the 
service. If he could have carried the same principle and 
the same spirit into his views of civil policy, his name 
would have stood not less high as a statesman than it 
does in military renown. But the perfect knowledge pos- 
sessed in the one province was wanting in the other, and 
the Duke's sound sense was at fault, working up mistaken 
data. When, however, he, in his own phrase, hit the 
right nail on the head, nothing could be neater and com- 
pleter than the way in which he drove it home. The 
right line with him was indeed always the shortest dis- 
tance between two points : the starting ground and the 



112 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

object to be aimed at. His fault as a speaker was occa- 
sionally that of arguing in a circle, which happened when 
he lost his way in questions economical or commercial, 
with which he was not thoroughly acquainted ; but, when 
he was on the sure ground of his better knowledge, he was 
clear and pithy, and some of the best sayings of our time, 
condensing good sense in the simplest and most terse 
expression, belong to the Duke of Wellington. 

Though, as we have stated, there were political subjects 
upon which the Duke's knowledge was at fault, yet to repair 
this defect he had marvellous instincts of necessity, and, 
though tardy to yield in the field of debate, he was forward 
in conceding when the time for action arrived. As in the 
signal instance of Catholic Emancipation, he saw that the 
thing must be, though he had not seen that it should be. 
He took up false positions in the field of politics, but never 
pressed their occupation beyond the moment when he 
perceived them to be untenable, and that an attempt to 
retain them might strain the institutions supporting the 
Monarchy, which was his chief care. 

We never heard, or read reported, any mention of the 
service of the people or of the public from the lips of the 
Duke. It was, as we have before remarked, always the 
service of the Crown, or the service of the Sovereign. 
Doubtless in that he thought all the interests of the nation 
included. It may be objected that this was building the 
constitutional system downwards instead of upwards ; but, 
waiving that question, never had the Crown a truer or 
more devoted servant than the Duke of Wellington ; and, 
before he closed his eyes, he had the happiness of seeing 
the Monarchy rooted more firmly than it ever was before in 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 113 

the affections of the people, whose loyalty, now, is not 
merely a matter of traditional sentiment, but of reasoned 
preference and settled judgment. 

LADY LOVELACE. 

Who has not felt an interest in the only child of Byron, 
the Ada whose name is so caressed in his verse, and a lock 
of whose hair is the subject of a touching passage in his 
letters ? Who has not felt at least a curiosity to know 
what features of genius and character had descended from 
the father to the daughter ? The Countess of Lovelace 
was thoroughly original, and the poetic temperament was 
all that was hers in common with her father. Her genius, 
for genius she possessed, was not poetic, but metaphysical 
and mathematical, her mind having been in the constant 
practice of investigation, and this with rigorous exactness. 
With an understanding thoroughly masculine in solidity, 
grasp, and firmness, Lady Lovelace had all the delicacies 
of the most refined female character. Her manners, her 
tastes, her accomplishments, in many of which, Music 
especially, she was a proficient, were feminine in the 
nicest sense of the word ; and the superficial observer 
would never have divined the strength and the knowledge 
that lay hidden under the womanly graces. Proportionate 
to her distaste for the frivolous and commonplace was her 
enjoyment of true intellectual society, and eagerly she 
sought the acquaintance of all who were distinguished in 
science, art, and literature. But from this pleasure, and 
all else, in the prime of life she has been cut off. She 
bore a long and painful illness with the fortitude, the 
heroism belonging to her character. We need not add to 

l 



114 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

this feeble, imperfect tribute how deeply she must be 
mourned by all honoured with her friendship — a friendship 
so cordial, so frank. 

LORD ANGLESEY. 

All have thought and felt alike about the merits of 
Lord Anglesey. In every journal, in every society, the 
same sentiment has prevailed. It was the peculiarity indeed 
of his frank and noble nature to make itself understood, 
and to impress all who had intercourse with him, how- 
ever slight, with a lively sense of his qualities. It might 
almost be said that his character could be read off at 
sight, the express image of chivalry as he was. His 
bearing bespoke the man, so gallant, so high, so cour- 
teous, Seldom have bravery, gentleness, and generosity 
been combined in such noble proportions. In his cha- 
racter there was not a fold : it was all open as day. His 
pohtics were thoroughly liberal, and with more far-sighted 
and sound statesmanship in them than the world has 
perhaps given him credit for. There is not within the 
last forty years a single important measure of reform in 
Church or State, of which Lord Anglesey was not a 
strenuous, a steady, and an early advocate. He generally, 
indeed, was in advance of public opinion, and strongly 
urged measures which were opposed at the time as Eadi- 
cal, but which are now extolled for their wisdom, and 
the settled law of the land. Catholic Emancipation, Ee- 
form in Parliament, Free-trade, Eeform of the Irish 
Church, had in him an early and staunch champion. He 
was a repealer of the Corn Laws and a thorough Free- 
trader years before those objects became popular ; and 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 115 

he disapproved of the compromise of the low fixed duty 
proposed in 1840, as short of what justice and policy 
required. Upon Sir Eobert Peel's bringing forward his 
plan of Free-trade, it was remarked to Lord Anglesey 
that he must not shut his eyes to the injury it would do 
to the landed interest. His answer was, ' Never mind — 
it is right and just, and the landed interest must not stand 
in the way of right.' The Board of Education in Ireland, 
one of the greatest benefits ever conferred on that coun- 
try, was Lord Anglesey's work. The credit has been 
given to Lord Derby : but it is so far from being deserved 
that he was actually hostile to the scheme, which origi- 
nated with Lord Anglesey, and was by his energies and 
exertions conducted to success. Lord Anglesey's poli- 
tical services were not appreciated, because he was not a 
speaker, and could not talk well of what he did well, or 
at least could not do justice in words to his own acts. 
But he had a sound, shrewd understanding, a judgment 
seldom at fault, often acting like an instinct, and accom- 
panied with a moral courage not inferior to his brilliant 
physical bravery on the field of battle. Few men have 
better understood themselves than Lord Anglesey. He 
knew exactly for what he was fit and for what he was 
not fit : and office had no attraction for him except where 
lay his sphere of utility, beyond which he never sought 
nor would accept employment. 

Lord Anglesey's administration of the Ordnance De- 
partment was remarkable for its scrupulous justice, and 
attention to all soldierly interests and claims ; other in- 
fluences than those of duty had not the slightest weight 
with him. We have heard complaints of his refusing 

1 L> 



UG BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

favours to old friends ; but he practised that to which he 
subjected others, and acted the noble part of refusing a 
favour to himself when there was another whom he 
thought more deserving of it. On the death of the Duke 
of Gordon, the command of the Scots Fusilier Guards was 
offered in the most gratifying way by King William to 
Lord Anglesey. He received the letter communicating 
His Majesty's pleasure at night, and at eight on the follow- 
ing morning he was in St. James's Palace requesting an 
interview, which he readily obtained. He expressed his 
gratitude for the King's kind intention, and the admira- 
tion in which he held the corps the command of which 
was offered to him ; but he added, ' I am sure that in 
naming me to this honour Your Majesty has not borne 
in mind the fact that Lord Ludlow lost an arm in Hol- 
land at the head of this very regiment.' The King 
acknowledged that the fact had escaped his memory, and 
thanked Lord Anglesey for reminding him. Lord Ludlow 
received the regiment ; and Lord Anglesey had the satis- 
faction of seeing a brave old soldier rewarded, and made 
happy for the rest of his life. 

While at the Ordnance Office he rendered the service 
of putting the coast defences in a proper state of prepara- 
tion. On one of his visits of inspection to Portsmouth 
he was accompanied by the Duke of Wellington ; and 
most interesting was the spectacle of the two veterans, 
old companions in arms, tottering along together, arm-in- 
arm, each fancying he was the prop of the other, and 
supporting the unsteady step. The older was, however, 
by far the younger, notwithstanding the loss of his leg. 
What Lord Anglesey was to the last in appearance will 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 117 

dwell in the recollection of thousands. He seemed to 
have left age behind him ; and, for a quarter of a century 
after he had turned three-score, there was the same up- 
right buoyant carriage and youthfully cheerful mien. 
Although his sufferings, from a nervous disease, were of 
the most cruel nature, they never affected either his 
system or his spirits. His activity with his single leg was 
something marvellous ; and, a-propos of that, we must 
mention a fact illustrative of his character. 

After the battle of Waterloo a pension of £1,200 a year 
was voted to him for the loss of his leg ; but he would not 
accept the grant. He did not like the idea of turning 
blood to gold. It is easy to calculate the sum which this 
self-denial saved to the nation. 

All through life, and to his last breath, duty was with 
him, as with his great comrade in arms the Duke, the 
ruling sentiment; indeed, in Lord Anglesey's dying 
hours, when his mind wandered occasionally for a few 
instants, the inquiry was, what brigade was on duty; and, 
upon the answer that it was not his own, he seemed re- 
lieved that he was not neglecting his turn of service. 

His death was serene, more than resigned, cheerful. He 
was surrounded by numerous loving relatives, and cheered . 
them with pleasant words almost with his dying breath ; 
and so parted this brave and honest spirit. — (1854.) 

GENERAL HAVELOCK. 

When Parliament was voting inadequate rewards to this 
brave and triumphant soldier, his admiring country little 
dreamed that he was already gone where the voice of 
honour, though never louder or more universal, will not 



118 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

reach him. The tidings of his sad fate have afflicted the 
public more intensely than any event of the Indian 
struggle, if we except the news of its worst tragedies. 
We doubt if the people of England in any of their wars 
ever took a deeper interest in the fortunes and career of 
a general in the field than they took in Havelock's. In 
him they admired the union of the greatest qualities both 
of the man and the soldier. They saw the achievements 
of sheer personal merit; an eminence due neither to 
wealth, patronage, nor connections ; a man of genius and 
energy winning the highest professional distinction, with 
nothing but the brave heart and the wise head ; proceed- 
ing from service to service, and victory to victory, proving 
his ability and prowess in a hundred Asiatic fields, until 
he reached the crowning honour of the post in which he 
fell, covered with as much glory as ever surrounded the 
name of a British hero, 

Havelock lived long enough for his country's service, 
and its renown, but not for a knowledge of its gratitude, 
and its hearty appreciation of its foremost champion. 
How it would have gladdened his noble nature to have 
known how generously public opinion vindicated his 
.claims, and extorted reward more commensurate with his 
deserts, though inadequate indeed after -all. The gladden- 
ing thought might have been his at his dying hour, ' My 
son shall find mankind his friend.' But still we cannot 
look back at what has been done with any satisfaction, 
and its insufficiency must now strike every mind. The 
first proposal was £1,000 a year, and, had that arrange- 
ment been made, it would have requited Iiavelock's 
inestimable services up to his death with a sum of about 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 119 

a couple of hundred pounds or less ; this was happily 
amended to a pension of the same niggardly amount, 
extended, indeed, to the life of his son. That son may 
be cut off by the sword or disease, and the rewards of the 
nation thus become a thing precarious, and dependent on 
the accidents of a life the most exposed to accident. Is 
this accordant with common sense and justice ? Should 
not rewards be as substantial and fixed as the services to 
which they are due ? Should it depend on the chances of 
life whether a requital of the most important public ser- 
vice should be thousands, hundreds, or possibly even tens ? 
Surely the sensible course in a case of this nature is the 
grant of a sum of money, rendering at the usual rate 
of interest the income thought befitting. The Princess 
Eoyal is not dowered with a life annuity, and the same 
arrangement of capitalising should be adopted for still 
better reasons in instances like that of Havelock. As 
for the title thrown in to make weight, the baronetcy, 
the question may now arise whether it is really a reward 
or an incumbrance. Many a man with slender means 
has had to deplore the barren addition to his name stand- 
ing in the way of his exertions to better his fortunes. A 
peerage for life would have been the suitable honour for the 
lamented Havelock. It may be objected that this is not 
the time to revert to these things : but such is not our 
opinion, and it is at a moment of grief like the present 
that the people take the just view of what has been done, 
or left undone, for the reward of desert of the highest 
order. 

The event which has spread a sorrow over the land 
only to be likened to the grief for the death of Nelson, 



120 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

was not uncontemplated. There was a general instinc- 
tive feeling of apprehension that Havelock would never 
know the value which his country set on his services, 
and the honour and affection in which his name is held. 
We remember especially that, in a very admirable article 
in the ' Times ' on his merits and the proposed requital, the 
very event which we have now to deplore was anticipated 
as amongst, not merely the possibilities but, the sad prob- 
abilities. It is for the Government now to represent the 
feeling of the country, and to mark in every way its sense 
of the services and worth of the departed hero. His 
monument wants no place in Westminster Abbey, and 
will stand imperishably in the very noblest page of Eng- 
lish history ; his family should be the present concern. 

It would have cheered the hero's dying hour to have 
foreknown that those dearest to him would be the care of 
his admiring and grateful country. The loving study 
should be to do all as he would have wished it done. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 121 



CHAPTER IT. 
POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



THE TREE OF LIBERTY. 

The woodcutter asked the trees for a helve to his 
hatchet. Like the Duke of Wellington, he had nothing but 
the iron at his command, which is no instrument without 
a purchase. He told the trees that his object was merely 
to prune them, and cut away the brambles and underwood 
which inconvenienced their trunks. The trees, having 
only wooden heads, were such dupes as to comply with hi? 
request, in consideration of such fine promises ; and no 
sooner had the man the handle to his hatchet than he 
laid it to the trunk of one of the noblest oaks, which 
groaned, as iEsop tells us, in its fall, that it was rightly 
served for listening to the promises of a woodcutter, a 
professed enemy of trees, and giving a handle to an 
enemy. 

Now, if the people of England have such wooden 
heads as to listen to the promises of our man of the hatchet, 
and to give him a handle, they will soon see him cutting 
away at the tree of liberty which they have so lately gloried 
in planting as the ornament and security of the country. 
—(1837.) 



122 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



MORE ZEAL THAN DISCRETION. 

It was the old Lord Harrowby, we believe, who, shortly 
after the recommencement of hostilities with France after 
the peace of Amiens, called upon the Government to put 
an end to the war at once by a march to Paris. 

Mr. Eoebuck, in the field of politics, is for a march of 
this kind. He is like a holiday soldier, full of spirit, full 
of courage for battle, but who wants patience for the 
necessarily slow business of a siege. He is for storming 
before the breach is practicable. In his opinion it is doing 
nothing to man the trenches, and run the parallels, and 
extend the sap. He despises all the covering works and 
slow approaches, and is for marching straight to the 
walls. He would rather break up the siege than waste 
time in so much pick-axe and spade work. The spirit of 
the troops is damped by inaction in the face of an inso- 
lent enemy, and he argues that, if they are not indulged 
with a coup de main, their valour suppressed will have 
the odd effect of causing them to yield up the field to the 
enemy.— (1837.) 

lord Durham's moderation. 
False or foolish indeed must any men be who con- 
found the firmness of Lord Durham with violence. His 
firmness has no more connection with violence than the 
timidity of some of his contemporaries with prudence. 
Seeing his way clearly, he walks in it fearlessly, within 
the fences of intelligence and property. He has always 
been the ready combatant of error, from whatever quarter 
it has menaced the peace of society and the well-being 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 123 

of the people. When the masses discovered a disposition 
to violence and revolutionary schemes, he was foremost 
and most vigorous in the stand against them ; when, at a 
later period, in 1834, the Eeform Ministry faltered, he 
energetically asserted the just claims of the people, and 
showed the great task of duty to them that remained to 
be performed. The merit of Lord Durham, of trans- 
cendent importance in our times, is his high courage 
and promptitude in correcting popular error and re- 
pressing popular violence, as well as in urging on the 
slow and the timid. He knows his time for curb and for 
spur ; and the people have, in more than one instance, 
shown the excellent temper with which they can profit 
by his corrective lessons, implicitly relying on his good 
intentions and his wisdom. — (1837.) 

A STABLE THRONE. 

At last the Monarchy is really in danger. Let the 
Queen look well to her Crown, for Sir Francis Burdett 
would syllogise it off her head in the turning of a sen- 
tence. Troy fell by the wooden horse, and horses proper 
are about to work the mightier ruin of the British 
Monarchy. Taking in a wooden steed was the destruc- 
tion of Troy, but turning away living steeds is to be the 
perdition of England's Queen. No Stud, no Queen, such 
is the rebellious conclusion which falls upon us with the 
suddenness of a thunderbolt. 

Sir Francis states the argument in the compass of a 
nutshell. The best horses, he affirms, should be prized 
above all price, and, ' if it is unfit that, under a Queen, 
interests of such public importance should be regarded, 



124 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

it follows that it is unfit that a Queen should wear the Crown, 
and not that the Royal Stud should, be sold.' 

The alternative being Queen or Stud, Sir Francis 
Burdett declares for Stud and deposes the Queen. Upon 
the single incompatibility of Queen and Stud he would 
establish the Salique law, as the Americans say, ' slick 
right away.' He admits of no question between the best 
of horses and the best of Queens. For a wilderness of 
Queens he would not consent to the sale of the horses. 
He does not regard Queens as he regards horses, as 
bulwarks of national safety, as instruments of national 
renown, and as, brought to a perfection, the admiration 
of the world. A Queen, he argues, is only good as a 
handmaid to horses, a head ostleress, as it were, a de- 
fender of the breed ; in a word, as the Studholder. Let 
it appear, quoth he, that it is unfit that, under a Queen, 
the breeding of horses should be regarded, and it follows, 
not that the Stud should be sold, but that the Queen 
should not wear the Crown. With how easy a conclusion 
he deposes Her Majesty. With what a brief and simple 
logic he takes the Crown off her head. A stable throne 
is the throne founded on the Stable. — (1837.) 

IF NOT, WHY NOT? 

We are reminded of a passage in the Duke of Wel- 
lington's speech, which may be numbered amongst the 
very few things marking his Irish origin. It escaped 
attention at the time, but it is far too good to pass un- 
noticed. His Grace, in the debate of the 27th of Novem- 
ber, 1837, stated that two Irish clergymen had been 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 125 

murdered ; Lord Mulgrave exclaimed, ' No, no, not one ' : 
upon which the Duke rejoined, ' If I am mistaken, I am 
sorry for it' — sorry he was not right in stating that they 
were murdered ! As the old song says, 

The flattering error cease to prove. 
Oh, let me be deceived ! 

It certainly is rather hard on a Tory leader that he 
cannot assert the killing of a brace of Irish Parsons 
without encountering a positive contradiction, and having 
to express his sorrow that the fact is not as he had stated 
it. Bearing in mind the pomposity with which Sir Eobert 
Peel two years ago proclaimed the awful truth that the 
life assurance offices had resolved not to insure the lives 
of Irish Parsons, it must be to the last degree provoking 
to Conservative minds that not a Parson has been shot. 
What, indeed, can be the cause of this untoward fact, so 
contrary to all Tory calculation ? 

In a bill in equity, upon a policy of insurance, a de- 
fendant was called on to answer the query, whether 
certain rats did not eat a hole in the bottom of the ship, 
and ' if not, why not?' So the people of Ireland should 
be called on to answer whether they have slaughtered 
any Irish Parsons, and ' if not, why not ? ' This is a ques- 
tion which should be cleared up, in justice to the insur- 
ance offices and the declaimers and prophets of the Tory 
party.— (1837.) 

MR. ROEBUCK'S CURE FOR IRELAND. 

When Moliere was asked by Louis XIV. what use he 
made of his physician, he replied: 'Nous causons ensem- 



120 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

ble ; il mordonne des remedes ; je ne les prends pas, et 
— je gums' l 

This is precisely the use that Ireland will make of her 
''friend ' Mr. Eoebuck. Mr. Roebuck prescribes civil war ; 
Ireland will not follow the prescription, and, without civil 
war, Ireland will soon, we trust, be enabled to say 'je 
gueris.' Mr. Roebuck is one of those political doctors in 
whose hands the health of nations is quite safe, if nations 
will only follow the plain rule of never swallowing their 
medicines. 

Adhering to this rule strictly, the physicians, or, to 
use a more appropriate expression, the licentiates of this 
college are by no means so useless as at first sight they 
would appear. We always learn from their prescriptions 
what course of treatment we ought to avoid, and what 
drugs are mortal to the body politic. It is something 
surely to have our poisons labelled, and to know at a 
glance what powders we should keep for rats, and what 
preparations we should throw out of the window. Amongst 
the latter are certainly to be counted Mr. Roebuck's 
Canada pills ; for so sensible are we of the hideous cala- 
mities of civil war, that it is not a remedy we should 
willingly prescribe even in a rat-hole. 

That violent disorders require violent remedies is a 
deceitful maxim, even where about the violence of the 
disorder there is least question. The truth is, that many 
violent disorders are only safely and successfully treated 
by methods the very opposite of violent. There is nothing 
half so malignant in the Canadian distempers as in the 

1 ' We converse together ; he prescribes for me ; I never follow his pre- 
scriptions, and — I recover.' 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 127 

Irish ; and yet violence is fully as absurd a prescription 
for the latter as for the former. The true course is Mr. 
O'Connell's mild constitutional regnmen. There is an 
energy in this gentle system sufficient to purge even the 
Church itself, without the aid of a single pill from Mr. 
Eoebuck's box, which is more to be hated than Pandora's, 
for, without being fair to behold, and without having Hope 
at the bottom, it contains the same ghastly troop of plagues 
and sorrows. 

In the fable of Prometheus and Epimetheus, the Greek 
mythology finely shadowed the wisdom of foresight con- 
trasted with the wisdom of experience. Prometheus, who 
resisted the fatal charmer whom the gods accomplished 
with every gift, including that of mischief, is the type of 
Ireland, proof against Mr. Eoebuck and declining his 
attractive box ; while Epimetheus, of whom Pandora 
made an easy conquest, and whose rash hand unlocked 
the treacherous casket, but too closely typifies the sim- 
plicity of the misled Canadians. 

Violence is a prescription pilfered from the Tory doctors, 
who order steel in every instance, and have always parti- 
cularly recommended that medicine in Ireland. We object 
to violence in all cases, whether used against liberty or 
for it : indeed, the experience of the world runs steadily 
to show that the violence of the foes of freedom tends to 
advance it, while that of its friends invariably retards its 
progress. We lose the moral advantage which our cause 
gives us, when we condescend to take our weapons from 
the Tory armoury. Violence is the natural champion of 
wrong. Those who have their quarrel just can afford to 
assert their rights calmly, and the remedy for impatience 



128 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

is to reflect that every hour by which victory is delayed 
adds splendour to triumph and security to conquest. — 
(1838.) 

WHO SHALL DINE WITH THE QUEEN? 

The ' Times ' certainly takes infinite pains with the 
Queen. It began early ; it began by instructing the Duchess 
of Kent in the proper method of educating her daughter ; 
and, the counsel not having been heeded, it next advised 
the Princess to turn off her mother ; but, strongly as the 
grace and propriety of that step were inculcated by the 
lords paramount of Puddle-dock, this lesson also was 
neglected. 

Thus, first, the Queen's education was not to the ' Times ' 
editor's mind ; next, the Queen's mother was not to the 
6 Times ' editor's mind ; and now the Queen's dinners are 
not to the 'Times' editor's mind. To speak the truth, 
the 4 Times ' is, as Moliere's Precieuse would phrase it, 
furiously particular about the Queen's company, and it 
has the most positive objections to Lord Melbourne. It 
is not of opinion, indeed, that ' a little Melbourne is a 
dangerous thing ; ' but it sees precisely the degree of 
frequency in his visits which must prove fatal to the 
Monarchy. The ' Times ' editor, therefore, with the pa- 
triotism which is his boast, to save the Monarchy, kindly 
presents himself in character of Duenna to the young 
Queen. 

There were three things which Solomon, albeit the 
wisest of men, did not understand. 

There are two things which have perplexed and baffled 
all modern sagacity, namely, Why dogs turn round three 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 129 

times before they lie down ; and why dustmen wear red 
breeches, which habit is inscrutable. 

There is one thing, and one only, which the ' Times ' 
editor does not comprehend ; — why Lord Melbourne is 
such a constant inmate of the Eoyal residence. 

Now, if the Queen cannot give the ' Times ' editor some 
very satisfactory reason for the choice of her guests, fear- 
fully will be rung in the ears of the whole world the 
alarm-bell of the Great Tom of Puddle-dock against Her 
Majesty's dinner-bell, and from pole to pole the moment- 
ous question will resound, ' Why does Lord Melbourne 
dine with the Queen?' 

In the last reign the cry was, Lord Melbourne is never . 
at the palace, the Monarch hates him ; and now the cry 
is, Lord Melbourne is never out of the palace, the 
Monarch delighteth to honour him. So true it is, begging 
Lord Melbourne's pardon for the canine parallel, that • any 
stick is good enough to beat a dog.' 

A losing gambler, rushing out of Crockforcl's at three 
o'clock of a summer morning, saw a stout man with his 
foot raised on the post at the corner, engaged in the very 
peaceable and proper act of tying his shoe. The gambler 
ran at the stout man, kicked his anonymous quarter, and 
upset him. The stout man rose in astonishment at the 
outrage, and, more in sorrow than in anger, exclaimed, 
' What's that for? I was only tying my shoe at that post.' 
' Only tying your shoe ! ' roared the other in a frenzy of 
rage, ' you are always tying your shoe at that post ! ' 

And such is the head and front of Lord Melbourne's 
offending. He is 'always tying his shoe at that post.' 

K 



130 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

The losing player, rushing out of the Carlton, cries out the 
Premier is ' always dining with the Queen ;' but Lord 
Melbourne will not be so easily upset as the stout man in 
St. James's Street, and he will tie his shoe wherever he 
thinks proper. 

However this great party question, the dinner-party 
question, may be disposed of, the Queen must perceive in 
it a foretaste of what her condition would be with a Tory 
Ministry, or Mastery, as it would more properly be called. 
Her very company would not be her own. 

In the last reign the Tories brought matters to such a 
pitch that the Sovereign could not dine out when he 
pleased, and now they would order things so that the 
Sovereign should not dine at home with whom she 
pleases. Thus, in an especial manner, they wage war 
with the Eoyal dinners. All the sympathetic dinner- 
tables in the land must feelingly resent this wrong to 
the liberty of hospitality, and ten thousand knives and 
forks should leap from their sideboards to vindicate the 
Queen's right of dining with whom she pleases. — (1838.) 

REPEAL OF THE UNION. 

We do not see how the promise of a Eepeal agitation 
infuturo is to act. Miss Edgeworth tells us of an Irish 
lady who was ever taxing the abilities of her carpenter 
for the production of effects above the reach of mortal 
hammer and saw, and, when the mechanic begged her 
opinion as to the mode of realising her conceptions, the 
answer was always — ' Somehow by means of a screw.' 
Mr. O'Connell resembles his countrywoman. The screw by 
which everything is to be clone for Ireland is the menace 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 131 

of Eepeal ; the screw of Eepeal is the learned gentleman's 
only mechanic power, except, indeed, for the Church, 
which he proposes to take down by the principle of the 
inclined plane. — (1839.) 



The Count de Salis, who wears the Eepeal button, has 
struck upon a novel argument for Eepeal, namely, the im- 
practicability of carrying such a measure. 'lama Eepeal er,' 
says the Count, ' but I hold Repeal to be impossible.' We 
need not trouble our readers with the Count's letter in 
full. The substance of it is what we have just stated. 

We believe there are many Eepealers of the same 
species with the Count de Salis — men who would not at 
all like to be taken at their word, and have the domestic 
legislation they shout for suddenly conferred or inflicted 
on them. They are stout Eepealers, because they have 
a lively faith in the impracticability of Eepeal. They 
know the Union to be impregnable, and therefore they 
think they may safely exclaim : ' Away with it ! ' 

When men call upon mountains to fall upon them, and 
invoke the earth to gape and swallow them up, they do 
so in full confidence that the mountains and earth will do 
no such thing. Thus there are certain Eepealers who 
vociferate 4 Down with the Legislative Union,' being well- 
assured that they might cry ' Down with the firmament ' 
with as much chance of having the prayer granted. 

The old man in the fable calls Death to come to his 
aid, but, on the arrival of the king of terrors, suddenly 
loses all inclination to accept his assistance. Eepeal is 
the death of Irish commerce ; and the Eepeal er, like the 



132 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

old man in the fable, would be the first to shudder at the 
grim realisation of his mad desires. 

Count de Salis advocates Eepeal, because Eepeal is an 
impracticability. This is a step beyond the famous ' credo 
quia impossibile. 9 The Count not only believes, but acts 
upon the principle, that the object he aims at is unattain- 
able. The alchymists spent their lives in pursuit of the 
art of making gold ; but the alchymists believed that 
there existed such an art, although not discovered. The 
Count de Salis is guilty of the complicated absurdity of 
chasing a chimerical object, knowing and believing it to 
be chimerical as clearly and firmly as we do. He is not 
the dog who lost the substantial morsel by snatching at 
its image in the water ; for the dog was satisfied that 
what he snatched at was as solid as what he already held ; 
while the Count, on the contrary, knowing the laws of 
reflection, and perfectly aware of the shadowy nature of 
the tempting object, commits the dog's folly without the 
dog's excuse. 

We might attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, 
and assign the reason of the Count de Salis for choosing 
such a path of industry : we believe it to be impracticable ! 

We might take a leaf from Mr. 'Council's book, and 
commence an agitation for the repeal of the Heptarchy, 
giving the Count's reason for our conduct : we believe 
it to be impracticable ! 

We might set about the enterprise of assimilating the 
bench of Bishops to the fishermen of Galilee and tent- 
makers of Tarsus — the Count's argument would serve 
our purpose : we believe it to be impracticable ! 

We might undertake to infuse the spirit of justice into 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 133 

Lord Hill's administration of the Horse Guards, or 
propose to ourselves to establish order and harmony in 
a regiment commanded by Lord Cardigan ; such 
things are impracticable, but what of that? quoth the 
Count de Salis. I am a Eepealer, but I hold Eepeal 
impracticable ! 

The Irish Eeformers ought to achieve all things prac- 
ticable before they give themselves up to the impracticable. 
It will be time enough to attack the Union, admitted to be 
impregnable, when they have carried the Church, which is 
not so strong as Gibraltar. In feasible objects they are 
sure of allies ; in objects unattainable who will support 
them but visionaries and enthusiasts like themselves? 

We altered the Eepeal button into a button for Eepeal ; 
and surely a button is full value for a scheme allowed by 
the wearer of the button to be an impossibility. 

Napoleon said that the word impossible was not 
French. The Count de Salis admits the word impossible 
to be Irish, and admits further its just application to a 
project put forward by its authors as the sine qua non 
for Ireland.— (1840.) " 



We learn from one of the organs of the Eepealers, the 
1 Belfast Vindicator,' that the Eepeal of the Union is not 
to be considered as a reform, but the very opposite. The 
' Vindicator ' tells us that it hates Eeform, and therefore 
proposes Eepeal. Its reasons for hating reform are 
curious in their very little way. 

The writer of the ' Vindicator ' ' would as lief wear 
an old hat without rim or crown as be called a Ee- 



1U POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

former ; ' and why ? Because the aristocracy would despise 
him ; and what a shocking thing it is to be despised by 
the aristocracy ! and what an exalted motive of conduct 
to eschew the contempt of the worshipful classes, as Mrs. 
Honor would call them ! But this is not all ; the name 
of Eeform has ' no spell in it,' and who would advocate a 
cause with a name having no spell in it ? whatever that 
may be, for we confess a complete ignorance of spells. 
And that is not all ; Eeform has ' no poetry in it.' Good- 
lack-a-day ! And worse still, ' no inspiration/ 

Eightly, then, must a thing have been likened to a 
hat without rim or crown which lacks the common 
necessaries of a spell, poetry, and inspiration. 

At the end of the paragraph, like the postscript of the 
lady's letter, lies the wonderful news that the Eepeal of 
the Union is actually carried, and that all that remains is 
the formality of an Act of Parliament ! ! ! 

So in ' Cinderella,' when Magnifico is trying to squeeze 
his daughter's huge foot into the glass slipper, he cries 
out exultingly, ' It's on ! it's on ! it's on ! — all but the 
heel.' 

The Eepealers have put their foot in it — ' all but the 
heel.' The trifling formality of the Act of Parliament is 
still wanting.— (1844.) 

T*00 WEAK FOR BOYS, TOO GREEN FOR GIRLS OF NINE. 

, Five hundred Eepealers are clad in green. What can 
resist such clothing ? 

Eepeal first modestly set up a button ; it has now got 
to a coat. As a button is to a coat, so, then, the present 
state of the Eepeal cause is to what it was five years ago. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 135 

Eepeal has evidently a tailoring turn. The colour of 
the uniform is well chosen. Green to the green. All 
who are green enough to believe in Eepeal will wear the 
colour of credulity. 

Mr. O'Connell is always talking of the greenness of 
Ireland, and now her sons are to be not less green than 
her verdure. 

Now that green coats are put on, Mr. O'Connell de- 
clares that the Eepeal agitation has commenced in earnest. 
Commenced ? Why it was carried in '44 according to the 
authority of Mr. O'Connell ! In the autumn of '43 was 
issued the promissory note for Eepeal three months after 
date ; and now the cause is beginning again with a green 
coat. It is a farce finished one day to be repeated the 
next. 

But can Parliament dare refuse to repeal the Union, 
knowing the appalling fact that there are in Ireland hun- 
dreds of men resolutely wearing green ? 

The conciliatory stage has passed away : it was marked 
by the cap which Mr. O'Connell set at England. The 
cap, whether a wishing cap or cap of maintenance, did 
not quite succeed ; so recourse is had to the green coat, 
the ultima ratio of Eepeal. — (1845.) 



Amongst the curiosities of literature are unlucky errors 
of the Press. Bayle has recorded some which will not 
well bear recital. In our own experience we have seen 
the immortal soul of a pious divine reduced to an im- 
moral soul by the dropping of a letter, and by the same 
casualty the lives of certain illustrious personages trans- 



136 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

lated to the lies of the same, and the Church in danger 
explained, as it were, by the slip, the Church in anger. 
The last specimen of this sort is an address to Irish Ee- 
pealers, bearing the signatures of Mr. Smith O'Brien of 
the black-eye, Mr. Meagher of the sword (query, word ? 
he being one who ' will say more in a minute than he can 
stand to in a month '), and others of that stamp, in which 
we find this passage : 

' We have all the same bright goal in view, though we 
may not all be of one miud as to the best and safest path 
towards its attainment. But upon this we are thoroughly 
unanimous — that this common object of our wishes can 
never be realised if we will consume our time and our 
energies in assailing and reviling one another.' 

Now this is evidently a misprint. The passage was 
written — 'We have all the same right gaol in view, 
though we may not all be of the same mind as to the 
best and safest path towards its attainment,' i.e. the gaol. 
The transposition of a letter makes the difference between 
the goal and the gaol, if difference it can be called, for in 
truth the goal of Messrs. O'Brien and Meagher is the gaol, 
and the gaol is the goal. 

The next sentence shows the correctness of our reading : 

'But upon this we are thoroughly unanimous — that 
this common object of our wishes ' (the gaol) ' can never 
be realised if we will consume our time and our energies 
in assailing and reviling one another.' 

Therefore, as the surer way to get into gaol, they assail 
and revile the Saxon and the Lord-Lieutenant. — (1848.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 3 37 



THE PENNY POSTAGE. 

The dispositions of the Tories to Eeform in its most 
moderate degrees have been sufficiently signalised by 
their opposition to every measure of improvement that 
has been brought before them this Session. They did 
not indeed throw out the Penny Postage, because they 
entertain a vain hope that it will throw out the Ministry 
by a deficiency in the revenue, compelling the imposition 
of new taxes ; but they showed plainly enough that, if 
they had been in office, the Penny Postage would not 
have been conceded. Here, then, is a reform most 
anxiously desired by the country, which the Tories would 
obstinately have refused, and which the Whig Ministry 
have granted to the wishes of the people. Can Lord 
Brougham name a single improvement, can he name 
any number of improvements, to be had from the Tories 
equal in importance to this ? Nay, can he mention any 
one improvement, great or small, to be expected from the 
Tories ? He professes to be in their confidence ; he 
promises and vouches vague things for them : but what 
can he venture to name? — (1839.) 

THE LAW OF MINOEITIES. 

1 The equal division of an assembly,' says Lord Mel- 
bourne, 'is a possibility always on the cards — a contin- 
gency which may at any time take place. Whether this 
be an advantage or disadvantage we are not precisely the 
tribunal to determine. We must decide by majorities, 
which, perhaps, after all is not a very satisfactory mode 
of settling questions. But the imperfections of human 



138 POLITICAL STBICTUEES. 

nature force it upon us. God forbid I should say 
that a majority is always in the right. I have been for 
so long a period of my life acting with a minority, and 
I even now so often find myself identified with them, that 
my associations and feelings are all the other way. 
(Laughter.) My prepossession, therefore, is that a mi- 
nority is generally in the right.' 

All new truths have their periods of minority ; but, 
when they attain to their majorities, does Lord Mel- 
bourne begin to distrust them ? Does he feel towards 
questions as fowls do to their broods, and. treat them with 
all care and love while they are small and helpless, but wage 
war with them when they are grown to their full size ? 

A Prime Minister, with Lord Melbourne's prepossession 
that a minority is generally right, must be in a painful 
state of doubt as to the correctness of his course. If 
his measures are supported by a majority, he must be 
filled with dire apprehensions that he has proposed some- 
thing very wrong ; if they be defeated, the comfortable 
sense of right is disturbed by the beating. 

If the presumption be as Lord Melbourne holds, that 
the majority is generally wrong, it certainly must be, in 
his opinion, as he says, ' not a very satisfactory mode of 
settling questions to settle them by majorities.' But is 
there, then, no other way ? There are Dutch auctions ; 
and is there no mode of giving the victory to minorities, 
the lowest number carrying the motion ? In such case a 
minority of one should be the perfection of reason. The 
difficulty, of course, would be to keep clear of agreement 
both with the foolish and the wise people ; that is to say, 
if it can be supposed that there can be any wise persons 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 139 

but one in a community whose wisdom tapers away to 
the fine point of a minority. A Whig Minister making a 
stand against some Eadical motion would find the Tories 
rushing in to spoil his minority ; and, even in the present 
system of giving the victory to majorities, how much 
must Lord Melbourne be distressed by the majorities given 
to him by the junction of the Tories in divisions on 
Eadical questions, which must destroy the presumption of 
right which would otherwise, in his view, belong to his 
minority of the Liberal party. 

Lord Melbourne's faith in minorities is not peculiar to 
himself. A Eadical member of the last Parliament pro- 
fessed it, and succeeded so happily that upon one remark- 
able occasion he carried his whole party with him out of 
the House, when he walked away alone. The con- 
sciousness of right, and pride of standing alone against a 
world in error, could no further go. Carrying the 
principle a step further, when a man is divided in his 
own mind as to any question, he should act upon the 
opinion which seems in the minority in point of force. 
The world would thus be governed on an entirely new 
system. 

Bedlam has always claimed to be in the right on the 
ground of its minority. The reasoning of its inmates is 
that there are few wise people in the world, and , the 
mad ones, who immensely outnumber them, lock them 
up. We are not quite sure that, if Bedlam, by virtue of 
its differences with the rest of the world, were thought 
wise enough to be trusted with legislative power, it would 
always suffer in comparison with the body representative 
of majorities. For instance, in a question concerning 



140 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

their own powers, the Bedlamites would surely acquit 
themselves more prudently than the Commons have done 
in the case of Stockdale v. Hansard. The Bedlamites 
would very judiciously and energetically have thrown the 
Sheriff out of window, and put Lord Denman into a 
strait waistcoat. — (1839.) 

TORY DISLOYALTY. 

If bringing the person of the Sovereign into hatred 
and contempt be a mode of producing insurrection and 
effecting revolution, the Tories are certainly employing 
all the powers of falsehood for that object. Mr. Brad- 
shaw is not alone in his glory. Mr. Eoby, at a Con- 
servative meeting at Ashton-under-Lyne, intimated by 
direct implication that the Queen did not know virtue 
from vice, purity from impurity, and that virgin inno- 
cence was banished from the Court ; virgin innocence 
banished from the Court in which the young Queen pre- 
sides ! l And this filthy imputation was listened to by 
officers holding Her Majesty's commission, Colonel 
T. and one or two others, whose silence upon such an 
occasion was acquiescence ! But these are only the promi- 
nent examples of the practice of the Tory party generally, 
who are acting towards the Queen precisely as Defoe 
describes their forefathers as having acted towards 

1 The words are that the Tory chiefs should ' purge the Court, which 
stinks in the nostrils of all but those who did not know virtue from vice, 
purity from impurity/ &c. Now, as it is certain that Her Majesty's Court 
does not stink in Her Majesty's nostrils, it follows, according to Mr. Hoby, 
that Her Majesty does not know virtue from vice, purity from impurity, &c. 
In a letter to the ' Standard,' complaining of some remarks, Mr. Roby does 
not deny the words quoted, and he cannot shuffle away the implication in 
them. — (El). Examiner.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 141 

William III. With merely the change of the person, we 
may apply to this incorrigible faction the powerful re- 
proach of Defoe : ' Your whole party abuse her ; your 
climate blows always with storms of raillery and re- 
proach : your mouths are always full of cursing and bitter- 
ness ; and you are ever casting the venom of your tongues 
and the filth of your passions in her face. Her best 
actions are the subject of your detraction and envy ; her 
disasters your mirth ; her sorrows your song ; her death 
would be your triumph ; and the nation's loss your joy/ 

The ' Globe ' declares that it will not blame the Tory 
party generally for the outrages of some of its members. 
We will. We charge the Tory party with an offence 
analogous to misprision of treason. It is true that the 
leaders and organs of the Tories could not prevent the 
outrages of Mr. Bradshaw, Mr. Eoby, and others before 
them : but they could have discountenanced and rebuked 
them, and, instead of doing so, they have preserved a 
guilty silence. 

Far worse firebrands than Mr. Feargus O'Connor are 
the Conservatives, who familiarise men's minds with the 
idea of rebellion and describe the Sovereign as the 
worst public enemy ; setting an example of vice to her 
people ; degrading and debasing the Crown ; and lending 
herself to the destruction of the religion and liberties 
of the nation. Compared with these incendiaries, we 
look upon such a man as Mr. Frost as a minor offender. 
1 Spare my life, I am not a combatant,' said iEsop's 
trumpeter taken in battle. 'No,' replied his captor; 
' you above all men deserve to suffer, for you sound the 
charge which stimulates the fury of others, and your 



142 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

vile breath gives the signal for strife and carnage, and 
puts a thousand swords in action, though you use none 
yourself.— (1839.) 



It cannot but be unpleasant to gentlemen to report 
what passes in society : but abuse of the Queen has reached 
such a pitch, and has been followed by overt acts of out- 
rage so alarmingly in accordance with it, that to refuse to 
bear testimony of it would now be like the refusal to de- 
nounce an attempt against her Majesty's person because 
of the odium attached to informers. It is possible that 
the elderly gentleman who declined causing the arrest of 
Francis because of the trouble, had a doctrine similar to 
that of Captain B., and, giving the traitor credit for 
the drunkenness which covers more sins than charity, 
could not think of noticing his offence at the time, or of 
denouncing him without inviting him to profess sorrow 
for his attempt or the indiscretion of betraying it. The 
regret of the assassin, whether of character or of life, is at 
the discovery of his hidden malice, and it is only of his 
indiscretion that he repents. But this, with the drunken 
reviler of the young Queen, would quite satisfy Captain B. 1 
—(1842.) 

1 An officer holding a high military appointment on the Queen's personal 
Staff so far forgot himself as to speak of Her Majesty in such coarse and offen- 
sive terms as to compel a gentleman present to report his words. He was 
placed upon half-pay in consequence, and Captain B., who held a Government 
appointment, blamed the informer, stating that if anyone in his presence had 
d — d the Queen at a convivial meeting he would certainly not have turned 
eavesdropper. He subsequently denied that his remarks could bear that con- 
struction, but Mr. Craven Berkeley, to whom they were addressed, affirmed 
this being their substance, and a duel between the two was the result.— (Ed.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. US 



PEEL AND THE TORIES. 

What's to be done with Sir Eobert Peel? is now 
becoming an urgent question. 

In the words of the old epigram, the Tory party can 
neither live with him nor live without him. They 
murmur against him, they mutiny against him, they 
reproach him, they revile him, they insult him, but yet 
they suffer him ; but the question is, can he much longer 
suffer them ? He is necessary to them, and they use him 
and abuse him ; but they omit to observe that while they 
abuse him they damage him for their uses. To break 
their utensil, without breaking with their utensil, is the 
character of their conduct. Their only presentable 
leader in the Commons they mutilate and cover with 
dirt. Their poverty, but not their will, consents to his 
leadership ; and the pleasure of their will, and not the 
policy of their poverty, is fulfilled in the ebullitions of 
their spleen against him. His reputation is their peau de 
chagrin ; their existence depends on it, and with every 
indulgence of their passions they effect a diminution of 
the reputation on which the life of their party hangs. 

The service of the Tory aristocracy is a hard service, 
inasmuch as it includes the condition that their leader 
shall also be their obsequious follower. They would say 
with Mrs. Malaprop, ' Lead the way and I'll precede.' Sir 
Eobert Peel is both above and below his place ; and he 
has the full share of hatred for being above it and for 
being below it. — (1840.) 



144 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

' I like my grandson,' said the old gentleman troubled 
with an extravagant son, 'because he is my enemy's 
enemy.' 

The Liberals have a liking for Sir Robert Peel on the 
same principle. They like the leader of their enemies, 
because he is their enemy's enemy. — (1842.) 



Sir Robert Peel's party is the road to his ambition, and 
he has macadamised the road so that not one particle of 
its structure stands out from the rest; all is a smooth, equal, 
dead level, over which the Premier smoothly trundles his 
wheel of fortune. We see Sir Robert Peel with the 
hammer in his hands breaking the heads about him down 
to the size of a walnut. He is far from being a great man 
himself, but yet he has the art, somehow or other, of 
making all the men about him little. They shrink and 
dwindle away to nothing under his leadership. They are 
reduced to mere ciphers, or head clerks of departments. 
See how he has hocussed Lord Stanley, pitch-plastered 
and all but burked him. Like the canistered genii under 
the seal of Solomon, in the ' Arabian Nights,' this fiery 
spirit is bottled up under the seal of office by Sir Robert 
Peel. The Premier, when he wants a dram for debate, 
draws Lord Stanley's cork, and puts in the stopper again 
and sets him by on the shelf just as suits his conve- 
nience. 

When Catalani's husband was consulted about the 
formation of an opera company, he answered, ' My wife, 
and four or five puppets, that is all that is necessary.' 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 145 

Sir Eobert Peel thinks himself and four or five pup- 
pets all that is necessary. He thus constitutes himself 
the sole dependence of the Tory party, and were it to 
lose liim it would find itself without a man whose capacity 
for leading could be recognised ; one as good or as bad 
as another ; all competing, and none seeming to have the 
superiority marking out the possessor for the chiefship. 

Toryism is the kingdom of Lilliput, extremely popu- 
lous but with everything in little, and Sir Eobert bestrides 
it as its Gulliver. 

And what enemy of Toryism would wish to shorten the 
days of the man under whose all- depressing hand Tory 
principles are broken clown, and Tory men of mark and 
likelihood dwindle away so as to lose all place of import- 
ance in the public eye? 'The cold shade of the aris- 
tocracy ' is a favourite figure ; but the cold shade of Sir 
Eobert Peel within its range has an intense effect of the 
same kind ; seeing which we may, without any doubt of 
our sincerity, address to Sir Eobert Peel the Eastern wish, 
* May your shadow never be less.' — (1843.) 

A CUEE FOE TEEATING. 

A charlatan, who sold an infallible poison for the 
destruction of fleas, was called to account for the inefficacy 
of the specific. Having inquired how the powder had 
been used, and found that it had been scattered about 
for the fleas, he replied, ' Oh, that is not the way ; first 
you catch the flea, then you take him by the nape of the 
neck and squeeze him till he gape, then you put a grain 
of the powder down his throat, and then you let him 

L 



146 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

go again, and you will never see him again, I'll warrant 
you.' 

Ludlow is Lord John "Russell's flea. He has had it by 
the nape of the neck : he has squeezed it till it gaped, he 
puts a grain of powder down its throat, and he lets it go 
with a hope that it will become ashamed of its ways. 

The illustration, it must be confessed, is too favourable 
to the practice of Lord John Eussell. He has had the 
flea by the neck : but he has not had the grain of powder 
to put down its throat. Having the flea by the nape of 
the neck, he has said that he would be quite justified in 
punishing it, but that, seeing that there are other fleas, 
he will let it run till he has made a powder, a grain of 
which shall be mortal introduced into the mouths of fleas 
held by the nape of the neck till they gape. 

Lord John's plan for the prevention of treating has in 
it much of the stringency which, with a nice application 
to a flea's neck, may cause it to gape. — (1840.) 

THE DUKE AND THE CANADA BILL. 

' Heaven forbid that I should raise my hand against 
thee ! ' said the Quaker to the dog, ' but I will give thee 
a bad name ; ' which threat the good man fulfilled most 
effectually by raising a cry of mad dog. Like this has 
been the Duke of Wellington's course as to the Canada 
Bill. Heaven forbid that he should destroy it, but he 
does his best to give it a bad name. — (1840.) 

THE JEWS IX PARLIAMENT. 

The main argument of Sir Robert Inglis against a 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 147 

mitting Jews to municipal offices was, that it was against 
the prophecies. 

How the fly on the chariot axle becomes poor in the 
comparison with this flight of presumption. Here is this 
miserable fly, just of a capacity to deposit its dirt on a 
Jew, conceiting itself potential to frustrate or fulfil the 
decrees of God. The wretched insect presumes to eke 
out the will of the Omnipotent by its aid. It says, ' I 
will not abolish a form of seven words lest it should de- 
feat the will of Heaven.' The pert, ephemeral thing 
argues as if the accomplishment of the purposes of the 
Almighty depended on what it, and beings like it, could 
do in their little cobweb sphere of legislation. In its 
audacity it is afraid that it may overthrow the whole 
scheme of Providence ; it prates, let us have a care of 
what we do lest we prove too strong for Heaven. The 
fly on its ball of horse-dung is apprehensive of deranging 
the plan of the universe. — (1841.) 

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON STANDING IN HIS OWN WAY. 

We have had no disposition to comment on the Duke 
of Wellington's declaration that he is not in the political 
service of the Queen. Solve senescentem, ne peccet ad ex- 
tremum ridendus, should have been in the mind of Sir 
Eobert Peel ; but it is probable that, whatever may have 
been the secret opinion of the Premier, he had no choice 
in the matter, as he could hardly venture to pronounce 
the Duke unfit for the duties of one of Her Majesty's ad- 
visers so long as his Grace believed himself competent. 
And it is a matter of notoriety that the Duke's claims to 
deference, and to the guidance of the judgment of others, 

l2 



148 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

are greater now than they were when there was more 
reason for them, that he is impatient of any difference of 
opinion, talks as if he were an infallible oracle, and has, 
withal, a very irritable jealousy of the suspicion that he is 
not. In this state of mind his Grace must be a most 
embarrassing colleague, as Ins disposition must be to avoid 
all questions which may tax his mental powers, and 
betray their enfeebled state. It is a sad case. He stands 
in the only shade of his glory. In retiring he would leave 
his greatness to the pride and gratitude of his country, 
and to the contemplation of the world. — (1841.) 

STOjS t E-BEOTH. 

Ministers have been cooking some stone-broth for Lord 
Keane. What is stone-broth? ask our readers. They 
shall hear. 

A fellow comes to your door in the country with a 
large stone in his hand, says he is weary and hungry, but 
no beggar, and only wants the use of fire, water, and a 
kettle to make some stone-broth for his dinner. Who 
would refuse a poor wayfaring man the use of a kettle 
and the fire to dress his dinner ? He fills the kettle with 
water, and puts in the stone to stew, and watches the 
simmering of the pot with great care. He tastes the 
broth, and seems satisfied that it is going on well ; but 
modestly observes that a little salt would make it all the 
better. Who could refuse the poor fellow a little salt to 
improve his dish ? Presently he tastes it again, declares 
it good enough, but that a handful of sweet herbs, if he 
had such a thing, would make it excellent. Who could 
refuse a handful of sweet herbs when nothing more was 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 149 

wanting to make a poor man's dish excellent ? Presently 
he tastes again, and is in raptures with his success in 
cookery, but some condiment is the one thing needful ; 
next it wants but a piece of bacon to be perfect ; and, at 
last, he finds that a few pounds of meat would make it a 
dish for an emperor, and, when he has got the leg of beef, 
the stone-broth is finished. The foundation of all this is 
the first gift, which has led to all the others. 

So it has been with Lord Keane, and others before 
him. Ministers put their General into the House of Lords. 
Nobody has a right to complain, for titles are cheap re- 
wards. The stone is now fairly in the pot, and upon this 
is grounded a request for the salt-box, which can hardly 
be denied ; the grant of a handful of money to enrich the 
peerage for Lord Keane's life cannot be refused ; and then 
there must be another handful for his successor ; and who 
could grudge a third for a third life when the thing is 
doing, and after so much has been given ? It is but the 
leg of beef which finishes the stone-broth after the pinch 
of salt that commenced it. 

Lord Keane has been a fortunate man. His great ex- 
ploit in India was the capture of a very strong place with 
a very weak door, and he will doubtless have the same 
good luck in finding a very weak door to the guard- 
house of the public treasury. Lord Keane did all that 
he had to do in India well ; his campaign was short and 
successful, and he seems to have been not displeased to 
leave off with the success he had achieved, and to hasten 
home fur his rewards. The question is not whether Lord 
Keane has rendered service, but whether the service he 
has rendered is such as to create a claim both to a title 



150 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

and two thousand a-year for three lives ; and this at a time 
when Government thinks it right to practise a most 
minute economy. 

A Treasury order was lately issued to the public offices, 
directing that old ink-bottles and almanac-frames should 
be saved, and returned by a cart, which would call for 
them, that they might be used again, and that notes should 
be written on half-sheets of paper. This was striking 
evidence of a rigorous spirit of economy. ' Take care 
of the pence,' says old Eichard, 'and the pounds will 
take care of themselves ; ' and when we saw the case of 
the old ink-bottles and almanac-frames, it seemed to us 
that the public purse should hardly want guardians, so 
well able should it be to take care of itself, according to 
the reasoning of the maxim. But, lo ! £2,000 a-year 
for three lives is asked for the reward of Lord Keane's 
campaign ! 

Juvenal raises the question, quot libras in dace summo f 

We wish some one would calculate the number of old 
ink-bottles and almanac-frames in Lord Keane. Let us 
see how much parsimony is necessary to make up for so 
much profusion. Let us see to what extremities we must 
be miserably penny-wise in order to be able to be mag- 
nificently pound-foolish. Let us have the computation 
of the value in old ink-bottles or almanac-frames granted 
to three lives in consideration of Lord Keane's successes. 

To conclude, we repeat that Lord Keane appears to 
have done his duty, and to have done it well ; but that 
there was nothing so extraordinary in his performance of 
his duty as to justify burdening the much-burdened public 
for his reward; and Her Majesty might much within the 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 151 

truth have said, in the words of the excellent old ballad : 

I trust I have within this realm 
Five hundred good as he ! 

—(1841.) 

THE POLITICAL MACHEATH. 

There is surely no exploit of the juggler comparable 
with the trick of Sir Eobert Peel to obtain for his party, 
through ' the science of darkness,' or the concealment of 
his intentions, the suffrages of both agriculturists and 
manufacturers. The great delusionist is to make believe 
that he is pledged to the one, and to hold out, through 
his decoys, signs and tokens of promise to the other. 
He is the Macheath, between the Polly and Lucy of the 
conflicting interests. He could be happy with either were 
t'other away. 

But while they so teaze him together, 
To neither a word will he say, 
But tol de rol de rol, &c. 

Sir Eobert's tol de rol de rol is the sliding-scale, the 
burden of his speech, which, without the details, is about 
as meaning as the burden of the song. 

Were Sir Eobert to slide into office we should next 
have the duet of the beguiled interests : 

I'm bubbled ! 

I'm bubbled ! 

Oh, how I am troubled. 

Bamboozled and bit, my distresses are doubled. 

Like master like man, and the happiness of MacheatKs 
followers is complete whenever t'other dear charmer's 
away. For example, at Manchester, Sir George Murray is 
free to declare against the sliding-scale ; having to do 
with Polly alone, he does not hesitate to proclaim that 
Lucy has crooked legs. In the agricultural districts the 



152 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

opposite tale is tolcl by the decoy candidates. The land- 
lords and farmers are assured that Sir Eobert is wedded 
to the sli ding-scale. The townsmen are told, with a 
knowing wink, that he is for a sliding -scale indeed, but 
that he is also for playing the agriculturists the slippery 
trick of pushing down the slide. 

Hide and seek is Sir Eobert's game. He hides his 
policy, cries whoop, and leaves his followers and his op- 
ponents to hunt for it. Each may fancy it what he pleases 
— the pleasures of imagination and hope are open to all — 
but they are disturbed by the pains of memory, in which 
some of his followers remember the passage of the 
Catholic turn, and tremble for corn. 

The agriculturists cannot trust him ; they feel that he is 
not thoroughly with them, and that he will tamper with 
what they fancy their interests to trim with the commer- 
cial influences, deranging one interest without doing 
enough to serve or satisfy the other. 

His mind is big with pivot only, if it be big with any- 
thing. Peel and Pivot must be the rallying cry of his 
followers — the rallying on a pivot ! What a fine prospect 
would this be — derangement for the landlord* and 
farmers without any proportionate advantage to the rest of 
the community. — (1841.) 

A PAIXLESS OPERATION. 

An ingenious dentist advertised a mode of drawing 
teeth without pain. His patients, relying on his assur- 
ances, awaited the removal of their teeth without any 
apprehension ; but short was their trust, for he .com- 
menced with a rude tug, giving cruel torture — up went 



POLITICAL STRICTURES: 153 

the hands to the instrument, up started the patient, and 
bawled, ' Why, you promised to draw my tooth without 
pain, and you have almost wrenched my jaw off/ ' Now 
stop, stop, my good sir,' replied the dentist with the 
utmost blandness and composure, 'don't be impatient. 
I do draw teeth without pain, but before I perform the 
operation according to my own method I wished to show 
you Cartwright's manner, that you may the better judge 
between us, and what you have just felt is Cartwright's 
manner, not mine.' The patient sat down again — another 
tug, another roar, another rueful remonstrance, another 
smiling explanation. ' My dear sir, you are too hasty ; 
I was only showing you how Spence would hurt you. 
Be seated, and assured that / will give you no pain.' By 
this time the tooth hung by a thread, and, removing it 
with much flourish and no pain, the dentist triumphantly 
cried, c Now this, my good sir, is my manner of tooth- 
drawing, and confess that it is not accompanied with the 
slightest uneasiness.' And so the ' Spectator ' would repeal 
the Corn Laws. In the Session before last we saw the Whig 
method of repealing the Corn Laws ; in the last Session 
we saw the operation of the Anti-Corn Law League ; and 
when the Corn Law, like the tooth, hangs by a thread, we 
shall see our contemporary's mode of repealing it without 
pain or difficulty. — (1841.) 

PEEL SAUCE. 

' Sir Eobert Peel's Sauce ' is advertised in the windows 
of the oilshops and Italian warehouses. It is the best of 
all sauces. With it any sort of fare, no matter how plain 
or coarse, is relished, and without it the most delicious 



154 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

viands lack zest. With Sir Eobert Peel's sauce a morsel 
of dry bread or a scrap of broken victuals is a luxury. 
But why expatiate on an excellence which has always 
been admitted ? Sir Eobert Peel's Sauce is proverbially 
the best of sauces. Sir Eobert Peel's sauce is Hunger. It 
is the sauce of the poor, and the only thing which the 
rich envy them, and cannot buy of them. 

Sir Eobert Peel has been reproached for doing nothing 
for the country since his accession to power ; but he has 
given the people his sauce in abundance, and he has not 
postponed to February the increase of hunger. 

Sir Eobert Peel's sauce is made of preserved Corn 
Law, from which it is to be had in infinite abundance. 
Never was it so plentiful as at this time, and the pecu- 
liarity is that people who have nothing else in the world 
have Sir Eobert Peel's sauce in their stomachs. 

The pickle-shops pretend to have Sir Eobert Peel's 
sauce ; but the country, which is in a much greater pickle 
than is to be found in the shops, has it in incomparably 
greater quantity and intensity. Indeed, the pretence of 
selling Sir Eobert Peel's sauce is a false one, for people 
who can afford to buy it cannot taste it. In the windows 
of the poor the announcement could with perfect truth 
be made — ' Sir Eobert Peel's sauce here.' 

We have not a doubt that the name of Sir Eobert 
Peel's sauce will pass into proverbial uses, and supersede 
the dinners with Duke Humphrey. Men sitting down to 
meals will ask each other, ' How are you off for Sir Eobert 
Peel's sauce ? ' Beggars will whine that they have nothing 
in the world but Sir Eobert Peel's sauce. Starving 
wretches who commit crimes to satisfy the cravings of 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 155 

famine will plead the irresistible persuasions of Sir Kobert 
Peel's sauce. 

Cobbett used to dub Sir Eobert Peel, Peel's Bill Peel ; 
but his apter description henceforth will be Peel's Sauce 
Peel. 

Certainly Mr. Shandy was not wrong in believing that 
men were made by their names. What do we want from 
a sauce but zest? and turn to Johnson's dictionary and 
you will find zest defined, the peel of an orange squeezed 
into wine. The orange peel is indeed a powerful 
stomachic, and Peel in giving himself, and nothing but 
himself, to the country — the Peel, and nothing but the 
Peel — has created a degree of hunger quite unparalleled. 

The poet for his feast says — 

Let each man bring himself, and he brings the best dish. 

But Sir Eobert Peel has done better than bring with him- 
self the best dish, for he has brought with himself that 
without which the best dish is savourless and insipid ; he 
has brought the sauce which henceforth bears his name, 
the best of sauce, Sir Eobert Peel's Sauce, the hunger 
which is everywhere prevalent. Let him, therefore, in 
honour of this curious service, be everywhere known by 
the style and addition of Peel's Sauce Peel. 

' He is himself a host,' has often been said of a great 
man. He is himself a cruet-stand is the praise of Peel's 
Sauce Peel. All the provocatives to appetite have been 
surpassed by his infallible recipe for hunger — the denial 
of bread, effected by the preserved Corn Law, by the 
exquisite process of the enhancement of price and the 
limitation of the field for employment. These are the 
ingredients of Peel's Sauce. 



156 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

We must not omit to observe this curious peculiarity 
about the thing, that, though it cannot be bought genuine, 
yet the profits of it amount to many millions, and are 
carried to the pockets of the landlords, who, like the 
giant in the nursery rhymes, 

Grind our bones to make their bread 

— (18410 

THE CORN LAWS. 

The Irishman, who found his blanket too short to cover 
his legs, hit upon the clever expedient, for lengthening it, 
of cutting a piece from the top and sewing it on to the 
bottom. This is pretty much what Sir Eobert Peel has 
done for the Amendment of the Corn Law ; what he has 
cut off from the duty he has tacked on to the averages. 
—(1842.) 



The late Captain Conolly, in his amusing ' Travels in the 
North of India,' carried away a napkin which did not 
belong to him from a bath. Discovering his mistake, he 
ordered his Persian servant to go back and restore it to 
the owner ; but the man protested against so unusual a 
proceeding, saying that he should be taken either for a 
thief or a madman, and concluded by a recommendation 
to his master to keep the napkin, and to satisfy himself 
with putting up a prayer for the man's prosperity. 

This is the way with our rulers. They keep the Corn 
Law, and instruct the Archbishop of Canterbury to 
put up a prayer for charity and the relief of the dis- 
tress which they have done so much to cause, lies- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 157 

titution is in such cases worth myriads of aspirations. 

—(1842.) 

How like to Sir Eobert Peel is Dickens's description of 
Mr. Pecksniff's horse : — 

c He was always, in a manner, going to go, and never 
going. When at his slowest rate of travelling, he would 
sometimes lift wp his legs so high, and display such mighty 
action, that it was difficult to believe he was doing less than 
fourteen miles an hour ; and he was for ever so perfectly 
satisfied with his own speed, and so little disconcerted by 
opportunities of comparing himself with the fastest trotters, 
that the illusion was the more difficult of resistance. He was 
a kind of animal tolio infused into the breasts of strangers 
a lively sense of hope, and possessed all those who knew 
him better with a grim despair' 

When our Premier was prancing about in the profession 
of Free-trade principles, he was like the horse lifting up 
his legs so high, and displaying such mighty action, that 
it was difficult to believe he was not making wondrous 
progress ; and yet he was all the time at his slowest rate 
of travelling. Like Mr. Pecksniff's horse, too, he infused 
into the breasts of some of our Eadical brethren a lively 
sense of hope, while he possessed us and others who 
knew him better with a grim despair. 

A piece of orange peel on the pavement is not a more 
slippery footing than reliance on its namesake, Sir Eobert, 
in public affairs. Simile simili gaudet : like likes like, 
and the Peel likes the sliding-scale because it is so like 
himself. There has hardly been a moment of his official 
life in which he has not been giving rise to expectations 



158 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

and disappointment. Benthani said that lie had great 
difficulty in defining justice, but at last he settled that it 
was the disappointment-preventing principle. If it be so, 
Sir Eobert Peel must be the incarnation of injustice, for 
his whole course, where it has not been deceit, has been 
the disappointment of those who trusted to him. 

Public affairs under him are like the bridge in the 
4 Vision of Mirza,' with trap-doors suddenly opening under 
the feet of those who traverse it. Every great interest 
stands, as it were, on a new drop, and it is a toss up 
whether Sir Eobert will or will not draw the bolt. 

We look at the Parliamentary stage now as we look at 
a pantomime, expecting the unexpected, and wondering 
only when anything keeps its form and its promise. 

By what perverse art, by what curious infelicity it is 
that Sir Eobert Peel, who has made so many complain, has 
made none in opposite interests content, we are utterly 
unable to explain. It is an ill wind that blows nobody 
any good, and it must be an ill Peel indeed that does so 
many much harm and nobody any good : but so it is. 

At the present moment commerce and agriculture look 
equally aghast at him. The one knows not what it has to 
hope, the other knows not what it has not to fear from him. 
Both have prayed to know on what they may reckon ; 
and the answer, as if in mockery, is, in effect, reckon on 
nothing beyond the present, full of distress as it is, for 
beyond the present the Minister lias no determination, no 
fixed purposes. 

He once declared that he would not put into the 
lottery of legislation for a better Corn Law than that 
of '28. He did put into the lottery of legislation, how- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 159 

ever, last year, with what success we need not say. It 
is too soon, he avers, for another State lottery ; so, by 
way of variety, he puts up the prize for a scramble, pull 
baker pull devil. The great interests of the country are 
to fight it out tooth and nail, hammer and tongs ; and the 
stronger is to have what it wants, the so-called Govern- 
ment standing by waiting to see which is victor, and to 
do homage accordingly. 

Horace Walpole tells us of a pompous ambassador 
who wrote to his Court, ' Some say that the Pretender is 
dead, some say that he is not dead ; for my part I believe 
neither the one nor the other/ * 

So some say that Sir Eobert Peel intends to change the 
Corn Law, some say that he does not intend to change 
the Corn Law ; but, for our parts, like the ambassador, 
we believe neither. — (1843.) 

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 

For our own parts, we are not favourable to the Suf- 
frage, miscalled Universal, in the present state of the intelli- 
gence of the labouring classes, especially the agricultural. 
We should prefer the gradual extension of the franchise ; 
but, if the question is to be whether we are to remain fixed 
in this filthy and pestiferous slough of corruption, or to 
pass to universal suffrage with all the objections belonging 
to it ; it being declared that we are not to have a measure 
to guard against the foul influences which are destroying 
our constituencies, because it is feared that it might tend 
to Universal Suffrage ; in this case, we deliberately aver 
that we would rather compound for the inconveniences 
and possible dangers of Universal Suffrage, than suffer the 



160 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

continuance of the abominations in the present system. 
It is like the choice between suffocation from the miasma 
of a cesspool and the clanger of an inundation, and we 
think the inundation the wholesomer peril of the two. 
The electoral system is now the great jakes of the country ; 
and there Lord John Eussell stands, daintily holding his' 
nose over it, and spurning the only contrivance that would 
sweeten it. — (1842.) 

THE TARIFF AND THE INCOME TAX. 

' Do you see how that fellow is cheating you ? ' said a 
spectator to a gamester. 'Hush,' replied the latter, 
' don't concern yourself about the matter ; I intend to 
pick his pocket as he goes home.' 

This, at the best, is Sir Eobert Peel's morality. He 
saw how the monopolists were cheating the country, and, 
instead of breaking up the game, he bethought him of 
picking their pockets on their way home from the hustings. 
A roguery is made the means of the restitution. — (1842.) 



' Let them hang you,' said the Old Bailey lawyer to his 
client, ' and see what a case I will make out against them.' 
Let them charge you with the Income Tax and rob you 
of the Tariff, and see how I will resent it, says Sir Eobert 
Peel ; but in neither the case of the lawyer's client nor 
that of the country would the unprofitable retribution 
reconcile the sufferer to the wrong. — (1842.) 



A farmer, having placed a luncheon with a huge Cheshire 
cheese before a clown who had been the bearer of a 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 161 

message from a neighbour, was disagreeably surprised, 
on returning from the fields some hours afterwards, to 
find the man still working away at the dish * What, my 
friend,' he exclaimed, ' have you not done with that cheese 
yet?' 

' Sir,' answered the fellow with all gravity, tapping the 
Cheshire with his knife, ' you told me to eat the cheese, 
and it takes a longer time than you may think for, to eat 
up such a large cheese as that.' 

This is the only way of explaining the non-absorption 
of the whole of the revenue by its appointed guardians, 
that it takes more knavery than one would imagine to 
swallow up such a large revenue as that. — (1844.) 



6 1 don't thank a man for supporting me when he thinks 
me right,' said a Minister in days of yore ; c my gratitude 
is to the man who supports me when he thinks me wrong.' 

As when Greek met Greek there was the tug of war, 
so, when Exchequer Chancellor in meets Exchequer 
Chancellor out, there is the tug at the public pocket. 

' There are two of them,' as the haunted man said when 
he saw the sham ghost with the real one. Job between 
his comforters was not in a worse case than John Bull 
between the Exchequer Chancellors in and out. 

The one lays on a burden for one reason, and the other 
acquiesces in it for a reason directly the contrary. 

As the toper finds in everything a reason fair to fill his 
glass again, so these gentlemen of the Exchequer find in 
everything a reason for emptying the public pocket. — 
(1845.) 

M 



1G2 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



PICKFORD AND PEEL. 

Every one has heard of the great carrier of England, 
whose vans and boats are seen, go where we will. Few 
are aware, however, of the benefits he has conferred upon 
the world, or that in the conduct of his carrying-trade 
Mr. Pickford became the study and the prototype of the 
great Conservative Minister. Peel is but Pickford on a 
grander scale. 

The Pickford theorem was this : — given, a road made 

r 

and goods already to your hand, to carry the greatest 
quantity in the shortest time. 

The Peel theorem was like it : — given, the labour and 
the work of others, to do more in a shorter time than 
other men. 

In the application of this rule these great practical 
philosophers agreed. The first carried the merchandise 
of others over ready-made roads, as in another depart- 
ment of the public service ; the latter carried the measures 
of others when the thoroughfare was sufficiently cleared 
for him to let them pass. The Peel and Pickford policy 
was coincident, and only not identical by reason of the 
difference between material and political merchandise. 
Both were carriers on a large scale, and both depended, 
as a necessary condition of their calling, upon the skill, 
enterprise, and labour of others. Both required a road 
and a market ready made. They never wasted their energy 
in making roads or markets for other men. 

There was, however, a marked difference between these 
great men ; — a moral difference which ranked Pickford 
above Peel. Pickford never pretended to carry anything 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 163 

of his own. He openly received the goods of others, and 
gave a regular receipt for them, and punctually delivered 
them. Peel, however, contrived to receive other men's 
goods, and to deliver them as his own. And though he 
evaded neither discovery nor conviction, yet he success- 
fully escaped punishment, as indeed Jonathan Wild might 
have done, could he have appointed his own judges, as 
Peel craftily managed to do. 

Pickford was the God of Peel's idolatry. Upon the 
whole, he thought no man kept so steadily in the right 
road. Hence their career was alike and striking, as the 
history of each will show. Pickford first took up with 
the Heavy Waggon Interest. He toiled and travelled, 
slow and sure. So did Peel. From Oxford to London, 
and London to Oxford, Peel's team was seen day and 
night, and night and day, dragging its appointed load. 
None so steady — none more trusted in those days. He 
was welcomed in and cheered out of Oxford by crowds 
of elderly gentlemen, old ladies, and children, who shouted 
with delight at the bulk of the load, and the skill of the 
young driver, as he wound his way through the narrow 
streets. It seemed like one of the settled institutions of 
the State, such was its magnitude, solidity, and equipment. 

But, alas ! we are never moderate in our hopes, or 
humble in our ways. Pickford was ambitious. Peel, too, 
sighed for fame. Pickford had long watched a young and 
rising rival in the Canal Interest, which was very likely to 
take with the public. Peel had not been less observant. 
He marked the smooth, seductive, and yielding character- 
istics of his certain competitor. They were qualities after 
his own heart. Moreover, the canal had been proved to 

M 2 



164 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

be as sure, and only a very little faster on the road than 
his own team ; and, after all, what was a canal but a 
road covered with water ? Pickford, who was an enter- 
prising man, dashed into the new canal business, and Peel 
cautiously followed him. 

The barge now took the place of the waggon, and the 
old wain, 

impeded sore 
By congregated loads adhering close 
To the clogged wheels, 



CO' 



was discarded, and Pickford and Peel launched their for- 
tunes upon the smooth and sinuous canal. 

Great was the dismay at Oxford when the old stage 
waggon was abandoned. Church and State were pro- 
claimed in danger when Peel gave up the Oxford Eoad. 
He was called even by those who had long employed and 
praised him, ' a man wholly unworthy of trust, and of 
thoroughly proved incapacity.' He tried in vain to allay 
the angry town by saying he preferred the old waggon 
and team ; but when he saw (as he said plausibly enough) 
how heads of houses were decaying, and how poor a thing 
the trade of the Oxford Eoad alone was likely to be, what 
could he do but follow Pickford, unless he was to give up 
the carrying trade altogether, which he was determined 
not to do, even for all that Oxford could offer him ? He 
accordingly gave up the Oxford connection, and relied, 
like Pickford, upon the public alone for support. 

Pickford and Peel were now fairly embarked in a new 
line once more. If they lost old friends, they consoled 
themselves with making new ones ; and all the world said 
that Peel especially was a promising fellow. They drove 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 165 

a thriving trade, and Peel carried many tilings for people 
who never either trusted or employed him before. He 
was thought a handy, active chap, and, by dint of his 
readiness, gradually got the patronage and business of the 
old firm of Grey, Eussell, Brougham, Althorp, and Co., 
who did a great deal with him. His business once again 
flowed smoothly on, and was, as it were, fixed for ever. 
There was even an Oxford Canal. But Peel did not ply 
upon it very steadily. 

Now, soon after this time there arose a great commo- 
tion in the carrying trade. People complained that the 
canal even was sluggish, and that during one part of the 
year there was no getting on at all. The elements baffled 
even Pickford and Peel ; and there was no satisfying the 
Manchester and Birmingham people, who determined on 
having no hindrances to their trade with London, or any- 
where else, indeed. They demanded such a change — 
Eeform they called it — in the carrying trade, that, com- 
pared with what Peel had encountered before, it was a 
perfect revolution. Horses drew the waggon, and horses, 
too, dragged the barge ; but now these turbulent towns 
insisted upon doing everything after their own fashion, 
and by abhorred machinery. He was quite astounded at 
the hubbub they made — 

The sudden blast 
The face of heaven and our young Peel o'ercast. 

Nevertheless, thus fostered and forced, in fact, into exist- 
ence, the great Steam Power arose, to the utter discomfi- 
ture of the Canal and Waggon Interest for ever ! 

Peel, alarmed, deliberated and was lost. Pickford's 
genius rose with the emergency. He had no notion of 



166 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

giving up the carrying trade. He openly traded upon 
trading principles, and he determined not to stand still. 
He dreaded becoming a practical proof of the saying of 
the Scottish metaphysician that men, through inaction, 
might become oysters ; and he had no taste for such a 
quiet life. So he made up at once to the young giant, 
and his vans forthwith flew through the land ! 

But Peel, too, was a long-headed fellow notwithstanding. 
He collected the scattered host of the routed waggoners 
and bargemen, and he gathered all the discontented 
around him, to determine how he could recover his trade, 
and, 

By what best way, 
Whether of open war, or covert guile, 
They now debate. 

Peel had, however, from the first made up his mind. He 
always intended to take to steam as soon as he could. 
He only waited whilst Pickford was testing the strength 
and success of the rail. When his friends talked of setting 
up the waggon again he held his tongue ; but, whenever 
an accident happened on the rail, he took care very loudly 
to condemn it ; and so his friends expected, simply enough, 
*to see him some day re-establish his old team again. Little 
did they know what was passing in his mind ! Peel had 
all along decided upon a ' bold, comprehensive, and direct ' 
course, as his friends afterwards boasted : but lie kept it 
quietly within his own breast. He had determined, as he 
had succeeded so well heretofore when he gave up the 
wain, to send on the first good opportunity the barge 
adrift — take to the rail — and even to carry the Queen! 
So, with his characteristic prudence and caution, he con- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 167 

suited none of his friends, but went straight to Brunei, the 
great engineer of the railway nearest Windsor, where the 
Queen was. All he required was, that the Queen should 
be carried safely, but not too quickly, Brunei thought Peel's 
connection worth having, and agreed to look after the 
business himself. Peel knew if he carried the Queen, 
such was the confidence of the people in her, that all the 
carrying trade would quickly be his own again ; — and he 
was right. Having, therefore, seen that the road was 
already well made ; and having calculated the chances of 
accident very carefully ; and having convinced himself of 
the necessity of adopting the railroad system, if he meant 
ever to overtake those who had adopted it ; and, above all, 
having found that the public had decided the question ; he 
decided for himself, cut his old friends and patrons once 
more, and, making a railroad carriage exactly like a canal 
boat and bribing his men to say nothing about it, succeeded 
in getting the Queen's patronage, and became again the 
prime carrier of the country. The fame of the disciple 
eclipsed that of the master, and he became known uni- 
versally as 

PlCKFORD THE GREAT. (1842.) 

CRUEL SUFFERINGS OF THE FARMERS' FRIENDS. 
Unde nil majus generatur ipso. 

There is a Society to prevent cruelty to animals ; there 
is a Humane Society ; there are merciful associations for 
all sorts of purposes down to the Industrious Fleas Eman- 
cipation Society ; and is there none for the protection of 
the Farmers' Friends, whose tortures at public tables and 
hustings it is dreadful to behold or to hear of? We live 



163 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

in a country which will not suffer a chimney-sweeper to 
put himself to the pain of climbing a flue, and which yet 
allows a Farmers' Friend to explain himself, as the cruel 
operation, as if in mockery, is termed. If it were an- 
nounced that any individual were about to put himself to 
the torture publicly, the humanity of society would revolt 
against such an exhibition, and the prevention of it would 
be imperatively demanded. And yet country gentlemen 
are permitted to explain themselves to their constituents ; 
and this is endured by a community which would not 
permit the same persons to perform the milder operation 
of eviscerating themselves! Bull-baiting has long been 
abolished in the passive: but is the baiting of a respectable 
country gentleman a less cruelty because he stands on two 
legs instead of four, and because he makes a show of 
voluntarily undergoing the suffering? — the fact being 
that the bull goes into the ring with quite as much relish 
for the persecution as the squire feels in going to the 
explanation. We fearlessly put the question to the public 
in the words of the old song, ' If you were an ass, would 
you like it yourself?' If you were a Farmers' Friend, 
would you like to explain yourself and your votes? 
Would you like to poke your eyes out, to pluck your 
nails out, to flay yourself? Would you like to go to a 
feast to eat dirt ; to go to a dinner to eat your own words, 
and cry good to it ? The horrible disgust of this operation 
is hardly to be described ; it is the torture of the shame 
far surpassing any that can be inflicted on the body; and 
yet a people who will not let Hindoo widows burn them- 
selves in India, will at home suffer Farmers' Friends to 
explain themselves ! 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 169 

A writer in the ' Morning Chronicle ' has, we fear, to 
answer for some of the public insensibility. We refer to 
some ingenious essays imagining what country gentlemen 
would say if country gentlemen could speak. Now we 
have no hesitation in declaring that there is much of 
fallacy in the assumption of our contemporary. We know 
the insolence and abuse which this opinion will draw 
upon us, and, to meet it in time with his own weapons, 
we will at once designate him as a foolish, feeble, and 
ignorant contemporary, for we are prepared to show that 
the position that country members cannot speak is not 
strictly consistent with truth. Pity has been claimed for 
them, and refused to them, as poor- dumb creatures ; but 
pity is, in truth and in humanity, due to them because they 
are not dumb creatures. The assertion may be startling, 
but we are prepared with our proofs in support of it. 
Livy tells us that it was accounted a prodigy when an ox 
spoke in the forum ; Eabelais dates some of his events 
when beasts did speak. It is possible that both were misled 
by fables : but we cannot be mistaken in the evidence on 
which we come to the conclusion that country gentlemen 
can and do speak ; and, if this be admitted, we leave it to 
a humane public to conceive the distress, the pain, the 
shame which the unfortunate gentlemen must undergo in 
their penances before their constituents. 

For ourselves, we will freely do all in our power to 
stop this cruel moral torture. We will receive the names 
of benevolent persons disposed to establish a Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Farmers' Friends. It might 
be made a branch of the Humane Society, armed with 
gags and muzzles instead of hooks and drags ; and in that 



170 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

case the cautions against going out of one's depth would 
serve for both services. Gold medals should be awarded 
to active and courageous servants, who save a Farmers' 
Friend from the torture of explanation, by promptly 
gagging him and dragging him from the hustings or 
dinner-table.— (1842.) 

THANKS FOR A HUME. 

Thank heaven there is a House of Lords, was the cry 
•of the Tories some few years ago. 

Thank heaven there is a Joseph Hume, must now 
be the exclamation in every Conservative mouth. 

It is dreadful to think what would have become of 
Lord Ashburton without Joseph Hume. Nothing under 
Sir Eobert Peel but Joseph Hume could have saved Lord 
Ashburton's character from destruction. The Govern- 
ment saw their ambassador trampled under foot by Lord 
Palmerston, Lord John Eussell, and Mr. Macaulay, and 
could not stir hand or foot to save him ; could not make 
a move to pick him out of the dirt, cleanse him of 
aspersions, and set him on his legs. 

But for Joseph Hume, Lord Ashburton would have 
been a ruined man. 

Give me footing to stand on out of the world, and I 
will move the world, said Archimedes. 

This was the want of Sir Eobert Peel for the rescue 
and reparation of Lord Ashburton. He could not move 
his world of government without a plant for the lever out 
of his world of government ; and this Joseph Hume 
gave him. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 171 

Thank heaven there is a Joseph Hume, must then be 
the grateful and joyous cry of Lord Ashburton. 

Thank heaven there is a Joseph Hume, must be the 
glad echo of Sir Eobert Peel and Lord Stanley. 

Thank heaven there is a Joseph Hume, must be the 
exclamation of Downing Street, the Treasury, and all the 
clerks therein. 

Thank heaven there is a Joseph Hume, is the accla- 
mation of the Carlton Club. 

Mr. Joseph Hume is now to be looked upon as some- 
thing more than a Member-man. He is an institution 
without which the Tory Ministry would be incapable of 
one of the first duties of a Government, the protection 
of a servant from a heinous wrong and injustice. 

When we see, indeed, according to the frank showing 
of Lord John Eussell, what has been done by the inter- 
vention of the Hume, and what would have been done or 
undone but for the Hume, we are lost in wonder at the 
potency and greatness of the part acted by the Hume. 
The leader of this strong Government could not have 
stirred to the rescue of Lord Ashburton but for Mr. Joseph 
Hume. 

In this particular instance of Lord Ashburton, Sir 
Eobert Peel's Ministry was like a ghost, which, as every 
one knows, with all its marvellous faculties has not the 
power of speaking first, but, when once invited to declare 
itself, can make all its wishes and purposes known. 

See what Lord Stanley said, in effect, at the end of his 
speech on the vote of thanks to Lord Ashburton. — (1843.) 



172 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

WILL HE SWEAE IT? 

It is said of a certain sort of character, ' He is not a 
man to be believed on Ms oath.' Sir Eobert Peel is a 
man to be believed on his oath ; but he must be on his 
oath, and, feeling this, he swears himself when he would 
have the world believe him. There is at least some 
modesty in this ; more modesty perhaps than piety ; more 
distrust of public confidence in his conduct and word 
than reverence for sacred things. Most gentlemen are 
apt to think that their motives are unimpugned, and their 
assertions credited, without the sanction of an oath ; but 
Sir Eobert has not this ordinary pride of a man of honour. 

In this particular case of the Ecclesiastical Courts Bill 
Sir Eobert Peel's oath that he has no corrupt motive is 
thought to be like the thief's protestation in the fable, 
that he had not the stolen leg of mutton. The rogue 
who had it hidden under his cloak swore he had not 
taken it ; and the one who had taken it swore that he 
had not got it. 

No man in public life has recognised the virtue of oaths 
so signally as Sir Eobert Peel. In '35, upon declaring 
a change in his views of the Irish Church question, he 
distinctly and emphatically stated that, having been sworn 
to advise his Sovereign truly, he had felt compelled to 
come to certain new conclusions. 

It is only a pity that he is not always under the strin- 
gent obligation of an oath. His spontaneous oath is of 
course binding, but he. has never given the public the 
great and much-needed comfort of it but once. 

When he charged Mr/Cobden with instigating assassi- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 173 

nation, he did not throw in that he believed it, ' So help 
me God.' 

Nor, when he protested that he would never put into 
the lottery of legislation for a better Corn Law, did he 
add, ' So help me God.' 

He should now always be asked whether he will swear 
it. 

When the niggardly lady in the farce orders sand- 
wiches and wine, the surprised footman (Keeley) eagerly 
asks her, ' Do you mean it, ma'am ? ' 

The same sort of incredulity, with the same sort of 
query, always applies to Sir Eobert Peel, and ' Will you 
swear it ? ' and if not, why not ? will be the proper test 
after his own voluntary precedent. — (1843.) 

MY GRAHAM. 

Sir Eobert Peel has taken Sir James Graham under his 
special protection, and proceeded through a long valu- 
ation of his services, somewhat in the strain of those 
poetic commonplaces, every stanza of which begins with 
the question, Who did this and that ? and ends with the 
name of the object of laudation. To the question, who 
did this and that when at the Admiralty Board, the tender 
response was c My Graham/ 

' My Graham's ' services, even in the opposite camp, 
were magnified and paraded with all particularity by Sir 
Eobert Peel ; but, when he came to the same task for 
Mr. Croker (whose claims to a pension had been brought 
in question), and with this difference, that Mr. Croker's 
merits should have been more intimately known to him, 
inasmuch as they were rendered for many years in his 



174 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

own ranks, in which he long played the part of a voltigeur, 
Sir Eobert had nothing to say, but that if the attack on 
Mr. Croker had been made when he was in office he 
would have given his assailant a disagreeable answer. 

Here was no long string of questions about the author 
of divers services, with the response, ' My Croker.' My 
Croker was left, as the Irishman said of the potatoes, to 
speak for himself. Sir Eobert Peel takes care not to be 
his sponsor. All that he vouchsafes to say of the cleverest 
man in his party is, that he would have delivered himself 
of something very disagreeable if he had been so attacked 
when in Parliament. Sir Eobert does not condescend to 
fight the battle of Mr. Croker, because Mr. Croker is 
simply a man of letters ; all that he stoops to is a hint, 
which would have been most aptly expressed in the 
pugilistic phrase that Mr. Croker is ' a very ugly customer.' 

Henry IV. introduced Biron as one whom he could 
present to his friends in the chamber and his foes in the 
field with equal satisfaction. Only one half of this senti- 
ment appears to be felt by Sir Eobert Peel as to his potent 
swordsman, Mr. Croker. All that he can say for him is 
the noli tangere for the type of a barren pugnacity, the 
thistle, acceptable only to the ass. — (1843.) 

LORD BROUGHAM'S FLOWERS OF SFEECH. 

We remember a farce in which Keeley is made to in- 
dulge in the kind of eloquence which consists in ringing 
the changes, of words on one idea, as when he speaks of 
1 a juvenile person of the other sex, a girl of tender years, 
a maiden in the dawn of life, a fair of sweet sixteen, a 
budding woman, / may say, a young female.' 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 175 

Another example of this style of diction is before ns — 
c I hold in my hand,' says Lord Brougham, ' from Sir 
Thomas Wilde, a distinct disclaimer, an articulate dis- 
avowal, a positive and deliberate denial of having made 
any such charge against my noble and learned friend.' 

Any one of these clauses would have served for all 
the others, and any one of them would have exceeded 
the fact ; but the sentence would not fill the mouth or 
the ear without the surplusage with which it is stuffed to 
plump it out. This style is derived from declarations 
and pleadings, which much delight in it, every word 
having its value, not indeed in enforcing the meaning, but 
in swelling the costs. An eccentric baronet, who pub- 
lished a translation of Aristophanes which no one would 
buy, had the 1,200 copies bound in different handsome 
bindings, and furnished his library with them. There 
was a fine array of sets of showy books to the eye, but 
it was but a multiplication of the one bad translation of 
Aristophanes. And so it is in these fine long-winded 
sentences, the clauses of which are the one idea differently 
dressed. And thereupon people exclaim, what a master 
of language : a master who raises a levy, en masse, of 
words for every idea he would marshal in procession. 
An orator who has a great thought, presents it as simply 
and nakedly as he can ; but one who wishes his thought 
to pass for more than it is, dresses it up in different guises, 
and ordinary hearers mistake the repetition for copious- 
ness. The idea is like the rusty nail in a kaleidoscope, 
putting on many forms and colours in changing appear- 
ances, but nothing at bottom but a rusty nail after all. 
—(1843.) 



176 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



THE FAINEANT ADMINISTRATION. 

The 'Times' is the Dog in the Manger, which will 
neither enjoy a good thing itself nor suffer another to 
enjoy it. Our surly contemporary attacks the poor 
6 Quarterly Eeview ' with ridicule and scorn, because it 
is thoroughly satisfied with what it is complimentarily 
pleased to term ' the policy ' of the present Administra- 
tion. For this the ' Times ' calls the ministerial organ 
stupid, and even goes so far as to liken it to the Ministry 
itself, which we must observe by the way is a palpable 
injustice, for to be like the Ministry, which does nothing, 
the • Quarterly ' should be published with blank paper. 

It is rather hard that the ' Times,' which has done so 
much to establish the present Ministry, should not allow 
anyone to admire it. For our own parts, even for the 
novelty of the thing, we like to see the 'Quarterly 
Eeview ' come out with its eulogium of the Government, 
to break the monotony of what would otherwise be 
universal abuse. Out of twenty-six millions of people it 
is good to find some one pleased, and we are much 
disposed to think that the ' Quarterly Eeview's ' satisfaction 
with the Ministry is more reasonable than the ' Times ' 
ground of discontent. The latter requires the Government 
to do something. The ' Quarterly ' says, how wisely they 
do nothing ! — how well they do nothing ! Here is their 
talent, or, as Bentham would have phrased it, their 
peculiar aptitude. Shining in doing nothing, they shine 
only so long as they do nothing. They are like those 
people who in conversation appear to the greatest ad- 
vantage while they hold their tongues, and who are 



POLITICAL STRICTURES, 177 

extolled for a great talent for silence. And why would 
the ' Times ' destroy this grace, such as it is ; is it not a 
good rule, quieta non movere? And what makes the 
demand upon the Ministry to do something more unreason- 
able on the part of our contemporary is, that lie himself 
declares that they never attempt to do anything without 
blundering and bungling most egregiously. Does not this 
fact show, then* to what they should confine themselves ? 
Does it not distinctly mark the province of their abilities ? 
Ministers are like the amateur managers of Drury Lane 
Theatre some years ago, who, happening to shut up the 
house for a week, were so delighted at the cessation of 
the nightly loss as to wish most fervently that they could 
always go on so. But the necessity of performance 
spoilt all. As it was with that Committee of mismanage- 
ment, so it is with this Government ; the best thing they 
can do, the only thing they can do without mischief, 
without blundering, without discredit, and without disgrace, 
is nothing. It is the Faineant Administration. 

What Dogberry's ancient watch was in the business of 
a police, the present Ministry is in the conduct of a 
government ; and the maxim of the mirror of constables 
of the night, extended to greater affairs, will precisely 
tally with the rules observable in the Administration of 
Sir Eobert Peel. The command to stand has been given 
to the Eepeal agitation ; but, if Mr. O'Connell will not 
stand, the State Dogberry cannot help it ; Be has done 
his part as becomes a peaceable watch, and can do no 
more, and the knave may continue without interruption, 
for it is bad to meddle or make with such. 

Oxenstiern sent his son forth to see with how little 

I 



178 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

wisdom the world was governed ; but things are so im- 
proved now-a-days that it can be seen how the world 
can be governed, not with little wisdom, but without 
any wisdom at all. The existing Government is the 
nearest thing possible to no Government; and, if it 
should prove that the country, in difficulties of no 
small number and no small magnitude, can get on 
with such a zero of a Government, it must be quite 
certain that it would do equally well without any Adminis- 
tration whatever, and that the whole apparatus of the 
Cabinet could be dispensed with. The Government of 
the country is in a predicament like that of the Irish 
Gentleman in Joe Miller in the sedan chair wanting both 
seat and bottom, who, shoved along shuffling with broken 
shins, came at last to the conclusion that he had as lieve 
walk as be carried in such a chair. It is without seat or 
bottom that the affairs of the Government are carried on 
in the sedan of this Administration, with Mr. O'Con- 
nell for one porter, and Mr. Cobden for another ; Eebecca 
and the Scotch seceders lending a hand occasionally. 
The chairmen's poles are the levers of the different agita- 
tions, and they are put to the same uses of menacing 
the Government with success, as these instruments in 
Moliere's comedy, where they extort from the impostor 
the payment of the debt he had at first insolently re- 
fused, with the gracious admission set forth at large in 
the whole policy of Sir Eobert Peel, ' People may have 
of me whatever they please when they set about getting 
it in that fashion,' {. e., with the argument of a stout 
staff addressed straight to the head. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 179 

The amazement and the scandal of the ' Quarterly 
Eeview ' at 'Young England's' demands upon the Govern- 
ment can only be likened to Mr. Bumble's emotions when 
Oliver Twist asked a second time for soup. The difference 
between the two occasions for astonishment and indigna- 
tion is simply this, that the little Oliver Twist in the 
political world asked for soup not for the second but for 
the first time, at the audacity of which solicitation Sir 
Eobert Bumble was well-nigh dumb-struck. 

The race of the Bumbles and the race of the Twists may 
be traced upwards from the poor-house to the Cabinet and 
the Legislature, and everywhere authority is astonished 
at the cravings of the unsatisfied wants, which it regards 
with the ' Quarterly Eeview ' as an unwholesome appetite. 
What can people require more than Sir Eobert Peel in 
power? Let them be content with that, and ask no 
more. Sir Eobert himself is satisfied, and declares that 
confidence in himself is all that is needed to set every- 
thing right. The malcontents talk of the largeness of 
his majority, and make exactions in proportion to its 
supposed power ; but the corpulence of the thing makes 
its disability, and it is as unfit for action as Falstaff him- 
self. It merits the character which the Greek general 
gave to a large army wanting the controlling and directing 
mind—' a great beast lacking a head.' 

Men of democratic opinions will not quarrel with the 
thing, as they will see in it the experimemt to what degree 
Government may be dispensed with, and affairs com- 
mitted to the currents of popular agitations. The old 
notion was, that either the causes of discontent were to 

n2 



180 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

be removed, or their consequences to be controlled ; that 
coercion or conciliation was the alternative : but Sir Eobert 
Peel's experiment is to take the neuter middle between 
the two, the easy, if not the golden, mean of doing nothing, 
and of bringing Government to the perfection of approach- 
ing to the same result as the absence of all government 
whatever. We shall see how it will end, and learn what 
to do with, or what to do without. — (1843.) 



THAT S NOT IT 



It is said that an Irishman never shows you the way. 
If you inquire the road to a particular place, he asks you 
whether you see the mill on the top of the hill, adding, 
well, that's not it, and whether you see the bridge yonder, 
and sure that's not it, and whether you see the great 
white house in the distance, for that's not it, and so on as 
to all the objects in view. In the debate on the state of 
Ireland Sir Eobert Peel's answers as to the aim of his 
policy are founded on this model. — (1843.) 

ME. O'CONNELL AND THE BOUKBONS. 

In remarking on Mr. O'Connell's desire for the restora- 
tion of the old Bourbon dynasty, we certainly did not 
refer to the proviso that Constitutional liberties should be 
granted, because we looked upon it as the sort of folly 
called in the East ' throwing words into the air.' 

Every Pretender is ready to make any terms for his 
restoration, and as ready to break them on the first 
opportunity. 

Louis XVIII. granted the Charter which Charles X. 
made ball-cartridge of in July '30. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 181 

When the Devil was sick, 

The Devil a saint would be j 
But, when the Devil got well, 

The devil a saint was he. 

Expelled Monarchs and Pretenders will promise and 
vow for the liberties of the people whatever is required 
of them as a condition for restoration ; but let them get 
the power, and they soon contrive to release themselves 
of the irksome conditions. 

. . . Vows made in pain 

Ease will recant as violent and void. 

There is not a Carlist who, if the opportunity offered, ' 
would not counsel his Pretender to sign any bit of paper 
that might be asked of him, reserving the resolution to 
make it a nullity. 

Has the world ever yet witnessed the reformation of a 
Eoyal race? Did the Stuarts show themselves corri- 
gible? Were the sways of Charles II. and James II. 
any improvement on those of their predecessors ? And 
have we lost anything by the defeat of the Pretender's 
attempts, though there is no doubt that he would have 
made large paper concessions ? 

To us it seems more prudent to bar the door against 
the wolf than to take his bond for good behaviour and 
a well-regulated tooth. 

But Mr. O'Connell is passionately fond of legitimacy, 
and stickles for ' the right divine ' like an old Jacobite. 

' There is,' says he, ' a security for every institution 
under a legitimate Monarch that can never exist under 
an usurper ; ' and as an usurper he has just classed Louis 
Philippe. 



182 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

In Mr. O'Connell's view of history, then, he must 
deplore the deposal of James II., as, by the settlement of 
the Crown on the Prince and Princess of Orange, Eng- 
land must, in his judgment, have lost the securities for 
free institutions. The Jacobites considered William as 
much an usurper as Mr. O'Connell considers Louis Philippe ; 
nay, Mr. O'Connell in his devotion to legitimacy, in the 
sense of hereditary right, may look upon the title of 
one King of a revolution as equally bad with that of 
another. 

As for the assertion that legitimate Monarchs can 
more easily concede liberty than usurpers, we know not 
where the evidence is to be found in support of it. The 
concession may be more easy on the part of such 
Monarchs ; but, easy as it may be, they do not make it. 
England's best securities for liberty have dated from the 
time that she set aside the claims of legitimacy and made 
election of a Sovereign. 

But in what single instance can Mr. O'Connell show us 
a legitimate Sovereign freely extending popular rights, or 
a restored one observing the engagements on the faith of 
which he had procured his Crown ? In Louis XVHI. 
and Charles X. the French have warning of what they 
might expect from Henry V. 

We are no admirers of Louis Philippe and his family : 
but, with all their faults, we should look upon the restora- 
tion of the elder branch as. one of the heaviest calamities 
that could befall the popular cause throughout the world, 
as it would be a revolution backwards, and virtually a 
declaration of returning fealty to the old regime. — (1843.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 183 



THE PEEL QUADRILLES, 

It is announced that when Her Majesty was SirBobert 
Peel's guest at Drayton he figured in a quadrille for her 
delectation. 

Now, the person considered, there is nothing in courtly 
acts equalling this feat in its peculiar way. Ealeigh's 
cloak for the feet of Elizabeth is dry commonplace com- 
pared with it, for what was it after all but the sacrifice of 
a cloak ? But for Sir Eobert to offer himself up as a dancer 
for Her Majesty's diversion is the most gallant thing we 
ever read of. It was as if the Archbishop of Canterbury 
had performed on the tight rope to please her. It is not 
often that the Queen can have any new entertainment as 
the guest of one of her subjects ; but Sir Eobert Peel gave 
her a diversion which no other person in the kingdom 
could have furnished. At Eu, in the chateau of the King 
of Prance, what had our Queen to amuse her ? A concert, 
forsooth, not better than she has once or twice a week in 
her own palace : but at her Minister's she had a ballet the 
most delightfully grotesque, Sir Eobert, in his own person, 
giving an amusement which all the Elsslers and Taglionis 
in the world would fail to rival in its particular mirth- 
moving way. It was indeed ' a dainty dish to set before 
the queen.' What price would not people have paid to 
witness such an exhibition ? The bare idea of it amuses 
us immoderately ; what then must have been the effect 
of actually beholding such a lusus ? The only thing at 
all resembling it that we have ever read or heard of is 
the dance of the Spinning Dervises in the East. 

If we might hint a fault, it would be that Sir Eobert 



184 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

figured in a quadrille instead of a pas seul, which would 
have had a still better effect ; but perhaps he reserves 
that for the next time that he has the honour of enter- 
taining Her Majesty. As it is, the devotion which he has 
testified to Her Majesty, as Terence phrases it, manibus 
pedibusque, corroborates the character which George the 
Fourth delighted to give him of the most elegant man of 
his time. Had he capered away before that monarch, 
we potently believe that he would have died of it. Who 
will not apply to such an exhibition the words of John 
Gilpin's bard 

And when he next does join the dance, 
Ma j we be there to see? 

A thing of this sort in a man like Sir Eobert Peel, who 
does nothing without a reason, must be looked upon as a 
prodigy, preparing us for the most extraordinary move- 
ments. It is surely an omen for a great statesman 
troubled with a corn question to dance. Does it prefigure 
a dos a dos with the Duke of Buckingham (it is well it is 
not the late one), or an en avant in the pastourelle with 
Mr. Cobden, or a balancer with Lord John Eussell, or the 
demi queue de chat with his own tail, or the boulanger 
with the League, or the chaine Anglaise with O'Connell? 

Certain it is that, with a man of the eminent consistency 
of Sir Eobert Peel, every part of his conduct may be 
taken as an index of what is to come ; and we look upon 
his sayings and doings in the recess as giving the cue to 
his policy in the coming Session. In fact, he speaks in 
figures and parables to those who can understand him, 
and the absurdity is in taking his words literally. — (1844.) 



POLITICAL STBIGTUBES 185 



A ROYAL COMPLIMENT. 

A max with a very cadaverous countenance was com- 
plimented by a friend on his looks in these terms, i I 
never saw you looking better, nor any other man looking 
worse.' l 

The same turn of congratulation may be addressed to 
the nation under its Tory Government at this moment by 
the Queen. Her Majesty has never seen her country 
under her Tory Administration looking better, nor has 
she ever seen it under any other administration looking 
worse— (1844.) 

peel's portrait gallery. 

We have been much puzzled by a paragraph in the 
' Morning Chronicle,' announcing that Sir Eobert Peel is 
' forming an extensive collection of the portraits of his 
political friends ! ' Was the like ever heard of before ? 
If we had seen it stated that an artist was employed to 
take the likeness of Sir Eobert Peel's political friend 
in the singular (and a singular friend he would be) y 
we might have given credit to the report, and should 
only have been curious to know who Sir Eobert Peel's 
one friend might be. But to require us to believe that 
he has more than one friend is rather too much. It is 
utterly inconceivable. 

No doubt Sir Eobert would be glad of a collection of 
portraits of friends ; but it is easier for him to employ 
an artist than to make the friends who are to be the 
subjects of his pencil. Perhaps, however, the Premier,. 

1 See page 10. 



186 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

because he has no friends, thinks to supply the deficiency 
by paintings of such curiosities, as the Dutch, where they 
have no soldiers, paint sentinels in the empty sentry-boxes. 

As a purely fancy sketch or essay in the ideal, no 
subject could be better chosen than Sir Eobert Peel's 
friend. It must have some likeness to Mr. Bonham, and 
yet it must not be Mr. Bonham. A bit must be culled 
from one man, and a bit from another, to make up a Sir 
Eobert Peel's friend. Colonel Sibthorp must contribute 
something, a whisker we will put him down for ; Mr. 
Bonham his gracious air ; Mr. Gladstone his charming 
vivacity ; Lord Stanley Ms sweet smile ; and thus might 
be clubbed a Sir Eobert Peel's friend. No one man 
would have enough of the thing in him. Mr. Disraeli 
could contribute as much as anyone, little as it might 
be. There is no other way of doing it than by hodge- 
podge or pick-nick ; by which is to be understood the 
pick of whatever there is appertaining to Mck (the old) 
out of every man, and blending all into a Peel's friend. 

Sir Eobert Peel hearing some one say that he was 
going to see a friend, cried, ' Let me go with you, for I 
never saw one.' If he had seen one he intended to 
have his picture taken on the spot, for in such a case 
there would be no time to lose, lest the friendship 
should be lost. 

The story is, we believe, in the last edition of Joe 
Miller; but it is a melancholy fact in the life of the 
Premier. 

Upon our own authority we can state that Sir Eobert 
is forming a collection of the portraits of griffins in his 
menagerie ; and we are assured that they are extremely 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 187 

like the life, niucli more so than the public-house signs, 
which have quite a mistaken notion of the figures of 
those animals. 

Our only apprehension is that these collections may 
clash, and impair the effect of each other, the griffins 
being mistaken for Sir Eobert Peel's friends, and Sir 
Eobert Peel's friends for the griffins. — (1844.) 

THE SKIN DOCTOR. 

Our Premier is what the French call a skin-doctor, a 
most fortunate quack at throwing in eruptions, exorcising 
pimples, and getting rid of a rash. There is no denying 
the miracles worked by Peel's lotion during the last half- 
year or ten months. His medicine indeed requires an 
immensity of time, patience, and gentle friction ; but in 
the end it benumbs and stupefies the acuteness of feeling 
in the patient and of interest in those around him. 
Weariness is created, if not cure ; and the slumber which 
succeeds exhaustion comes at least to suspend irritation 
and suffering. 

But the skin-doctor evidently shows his reluctance and 
incapacity to meddle with the chronic disease. His art 
does not extend beyond the surface, or his cure beyond 
the preservation of quiet and the saving of appearances. 
He shrinks from searching into the true source of disease, 
for that would task his faculties and weigh upon his re- 
sponsibility too much. He finds it more convenient to 
deny the existence of all internal disorder ; and, how- 
ever deadly the ill which ossifies the heart or inflames the 
intestines, Sir Eobert has still but the old medicines of his 
police lotions and his mesmeric speeches. — (1844.) 



188 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



THE MAN OF LETTERS. 1 



It was the custom in France in Napoleon's time, and 
in that of Louis the Eighteenth, for the solemn sittings 
of Cabinet Councils to be opened, not by prayer and 
thanksgiving, but by a daily report from the police and 
the post-office. Before entering upon the grave discus- 
sion of the business of the nation, the Council was en- 
lightened as to the comings and goings of this and that 
personage, with extracts from their letters, revelations of 
their amours, and records of their social quarrels. A 
Prime Minister once protested against this custom as an 
egregious loss of time. ' Do you want to rob me of the 
only entertaining part of Cabinet Councils?' asked the 
King. ' You can't expect me to sit out your solemn 
tragedies unless you indulge me in my police and post- 
office interludes.' The other Ministers agreed with the 
Monarch, who was always put in good humour by prying 
into the billet-doux of his courtiers. Fouche had a col- 
lection that would have furnished forth another edition of 
Brantome's ' Dames Galantes.' No one knew where he 
kept it. Napoleon, who paid him to spy, paid another 
genius to act spy upon him. As the whole French system 
has been transplanted and acclimatized here, we wonder 
who is employed to watch Sir James, Quis custodiet istum 
custodem ? 

But Louis Philippe keeps a man of letters and re- 

1 Relating to the opening of private letters on their transit through the 
Post-Office by order of the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, with a view 
to the discovery of treasonable correspondence — the condemnation aud defence 
of which practice gave rise to much angry debate in Parliament, and finally 
resulted in a Secret Committee of Enquiry being granted. — (Ed.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 189 

search far more clever than either Fouche or Graham. 
His insight is quite miraculous, and his mode of arriving 
at the contents of a letter without breaking the seal is 
indeed prodigious. No Mazzini ever complained in 
France that his letters were opened, no Stolzman dunned 
a Liberal deputy to state that his missives were in- 
tercepted. This is statesmanship as it should be. A 
Chancellor of the Exchequer should pick our pockets 
without superadding the annoyance of our being con- 
scious of it, and a Home Secretary should read our letters 
without disturbing our confidence by stating the mean 
fact. They manage these matters better in France. 
M. Comte is Louis Philippe's man of letters, a gay, con- 
vivial, courtly old gentleman, and with such a fund of 
anecdote — the latter easily accounted for. He is a walk- 
ing 'Biographie des Contemporains,' knows everything 
that was said, thought, or written by an eminent per- 
sonage of either sex for the last forty years. No man has 
brought to such perfection as Comte the art of judging 
of people's characters by their hand-writing. Sir J. 
Graham might go to school to him. One inestimable 
quality of such a master would be invaluable to such a 
pupil, this is the impossibility of being turned out of his 
office. Most Liberal Ministers who have come into 
power in France have commenced by insisting on the 
removal of M. Comte. All were convinced, in a few 
minutes, that the thing was impossible, or, at least, that 
it would be attended with the greatest possible incon- 
venience—to themselves. 

M. Comte is the inventor of one of the most efficient 
checks upon the licentiousness of the press that have 



190 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

ever yet been found. The stamp on French journals 
being about a halfpenny, and the postage but four-fifths 
of one, of course all journals go through the Post-office. 
Any fine morning M. Comte gives an order, that all the 
numbers of any journal shall be seized and sealed up in 
a bag. He may do this for a week consecutively, thereby 
burking the journal. Should the law authorities prose- 
cute the said journal, and should it be acquitted, M. 
Comte returns the papers — sis months after date. But 
in no case can any editor or proprietor bring an action 
against M. Comte ; they must first obtain leave of the 
Council of State, and that gentleman is of course one of 
its members. This being on the orthodox plan of pre- 
vention better than cure, we recommend it to Sir James, 
whom the English press certainly doth abuse most 
vilely. 

In parts of Germany, not the most envied, persons 
who write and don't like to have their seals broken, — for 
when they are awkwardly broken the letter is sacrificed, 
— put their names on the back of the letters, and some 
times add a summary of the contents. This saves police and 
post-office much trouble, and might be adopted advan- 
tageously by the refugee population around the Hay- 
market during the administration of the Baronet of 
Netherby. 

The paternal Government of Austria has a way of its 
own. It is most anxious after the health of its subjects, 
and is haunted by the idea that the plague might circu- 
late in a letter, or the cholera be enwrapped in a billet- 
doux. The Austrian police therefore breaks the seal, 
unfolds the letter, takes a copy of the contents by some very 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 191 

awkward mode of impression, which leaves the letter as if 
it had come off a lithographic stone, and then the double- 
headed eagle is stamped upon every page. The sight of 
this tutelary bird ensures to the worthy Austrian that 
his letter is free from either plague or political sin, and he 
blesses the providence of the Emperor. Why should not 
the Netherby arms attest the purity of John Bull's cor- 
respondence after examination ? 

We trust that a Commission will be appointed to in- 
quire into and collect these foreign improvements in so 
interesting a science. The practice of sending com- 
mercial delegates has been abandoned, from the hopeless- 
ness of concluding treaties, or the determination to make 
no concession towards them. Let the salaries be trans- 
ferred to delegates from the A division of Bow Street, 
the ABC division of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and the 
P E Y Council Chamber of Whitehall.— (1844.) 



Sm James Graham plays the part of Moliere's Mas- 
carille to perfection. 

One of his porters civilly asked Mascarille for his fare. 
Mascarille haughtily asks him what he means by such 
impertinence, and boxes his ears. The other porter upon 
this takes up his pole and threatens Mascarille with a 
drubbing, on which the bully gives all that is demanded, 
saying, ' People may get anything from me when they 
set the right way about it.' 

We have seen our Mascarille loftily refusing to vouch- 
safe any reply to the questions as to the doings in the 
Post-office. He would give no information, no explana- 



192 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

tion whatever ; lie took his stand on his authority until 
frightened into concession by the threatening tone of 
public opinion. — (1844.) 



The boy Jones 1 admirably maintains his character, 
and his title to the name wittily bestowed on him, of 
Inigo. 

Serving on board of the ' Warspite,' and being curious 
to see how the life-buoy worked, Inigo plunged into the 
sea, called out for the life-buoy and a boat, and had his 
desire for the exhibition of the uses of the life-buoy 
fully gratified in the most practical way. 

The curiosity of this boy Jones should surely be 
turned to some account in Her Majesty's service. In 
the Navy it is obviously inconvenient. A whole ship's 
company was, as we have seen, thrown into alarm, the 
ship hove to, boats lowered away, and the light of the 
buoy wastefully burnt, that the boy Jones might see 
what he had a curiosity about. He may next take it 
into his head that he would like to see a ship on fire, or 
the explosion of a powder magazine, and would find 
some way of satisfying his wish. 

But there is a vent for his inordinate curiosity, in 
which he might be useful. It is not the vent for 
which he was educated, the vent of chimnies, but a vent 
far dirtier — the Post-office espionage, under Sir James 
Graham. Let him be appointed coadjutor to the Home 

1 This boy had a mania for penetrating into the Queen's residence, and 
vfa.3 several times found secreted in different parts of Buckingham Palace. 
-(Ed.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 103 

Secretary in stealing into the thoughts and private com- 
munications. The business of the Secret Office would 
precisely suit his parts ; so much so, indeed, that there 
cannot be a doubt that, if he were at home and at liberty, 
he would, by hook or by crook, contrive to find his 
way into that inquisitorial chamber. For what is the 
privacy of a palace, which so tempted him, compared 
with the opportunity of prying into the privacy of a 
whole nation's confidential communications ? 

The only question is, whether the boy Jones would 
consent to be the colleague of Sir James Graham ; for 
he may, with some justice, draw a distinction between 
his inquisitiveness on his own impulses and at his own 
risk, and the mean pandering to the malignant curiosity 
of others.— (1844.) 



The complaint that letters opened were re-sealed may 
be met with the same sort of reply that George Selwyn 
made to the reproach that he had gone to see one of the 
Scotch lords beheaded. ' Well,' he answered, ' if I did 
go to see his head taken off, did I not make amends in 
going to see it sewn on again ? ' 

If Sir James Graham does open your letters, does he 
not make the amends of sealing them up again ? — (1845.) 

PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 

In former days, when a man had set his heart upon some 
object, he made a vow not to shave, or not to cut his 
nails, or not to wash, or to wear a horse -hair shirt or a 
girdle with spikes in it, till he had accomplished the 
exploit. 

o 



194 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

Our friends of the League are reviving this sensible 
expedient. The people are not to bathe, and not to live 
in wholesome dwellings and untainted air, till the re- 
strictions be removed from their industry. 

When Cato saw a man in sorrow tearing his hair, he 
asked him whether baldness was a cure for grief ? Are 
dirt and miasma any remedies for monopoly ? Have dirt 
and miasma any tendency to free-trade ? — (1844.) 



4 Why will you rob me ? ' said the Prince to his 

favourite cook. ' You know that I cannot part with you ; 
but I don't like to be robbed. Calculate what you make 
by robbing me ; let me know what it is, and I will add it 
to your salary.' The cook required time to think of the 
proposal, and after mature deliberation said, ' Sir, I have 
well considered what you offer, but I cannot consent. I 
must rob you.' 

And so it is with the protected interests. They must 
rob us.— (1845.) 



The man who quarrelled with his dog's tail and cut it 
off by inches, always found the offence in the extreme of 
the tail ; but, as he docked and docked extreme, extreme 
was still left to dock again till he got to the stump. 

The first bad harvest we have, Sir Robert Peel will 
discover that the protective system has still an extreme, 
and will cut off another joint of the tail of monopoly. — 
(1845.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 195 

What is going to happen ? Lord George Bentinck has 
sold his race-horses, and taken leave of the Turf. This 
looks like the burning of the ships, and occasions the sort 
of astonishment which the Eoman satirist counts upon in 
the announcement that a certain lady has torn herself 
from her amusements to devote herself wholly to her 
vices. 

The country wants all Lord George Bentinck. It 
cannot spare any part of him for any other business 
than that of saving her. Lord George Bentinck is her 
last man. 

The Protectionists are like the Ten Thousand Greeks 
suddenly deprived of their leaders, and who found a chief 
in one Xenophon, a sort of Bentinck of his day, the treach- 
erous Tissaphernes having been the Peel. We are now 
beholding a second Anabasis, with this trifling difference, 
that it is more of a going down than of a going up, going 
down to Greenwich, going down to King's Lynn, and, 
above all, going down in opinion. 

Whether this modern Xenophon will ever bring his 
retreating army within view of the sea, it would be too 
bold to conjecture ; but, as a step to the crowning exploit, 
he showed them the river at Greenwich, and the host 
raised a shout of white-bait. But how far is white-bait 
from Whitehall ? how far King's Lynn from the Queen's 
Cabinet ? and when will the Xenophon of the Protection- 
ists bless their sights with the long-hoped-for view of the 
straits of Downing Street ? Alack ! alack ! all other 
straits will they know first, not excepting peradventure 
the strait-waistcoat. 

The resemblances between the retreat of the Ten 

o 2 



196 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

_ , 

Thousand and the Catabasis of the Protectionists are 
manifold. 

There is the same despondency in the troops, the same 
inordinate propensity to panic. An ass in the camp one 
night filled the Greeks with consternation, and in the 
Protectionist camp, too, asinine alarms prevail both day 
and night to the most insensate degree. With the Pro- 
tectionists it is thought a sign of honesty to be in a fright, 
which shows also how Greek they are, their honesty having 
an obvious derivation not from the Latin honos, but from 
the Greek for an ass, ovo$ (onos). 

Xenophon's army burnt their tents that they might get 
on the faster : Lord George Bentinck sells his horses to 
speed the plough. In the history of the sacrifices which 
men have made for their country, this will shine as one of 
the most notable instances. There was a Queen of France 
who vowed that she would not change a certain under 
garment till a rebellious town were taken ; the place held 
out ; the Queen kept her oath, and changed not her linen ; 
and in compliment to Her Majesty's plight a colour came 
into vogue denoting constancy to be of a very dirty hue. 
It would become Lord George Bentinck passing well to 
make some vow of this kind, such as that he will never 
sit down again till he sits on the Treasury Bench. But 
what he has done as to the horses is very handsome as 
far as it goes ; and it throws a light on History, and 
interprets the story of Curtius, who doubtless sent his 
charger to the Tattersall's of the day that he might throw 
himself into an open place and so save the State. And, 
after this example, whenever there is a place open for 
Lord George Bentinck, we shall surely see him patriotically 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 197 

jump into it. The great difficulty of modern times is* 
however, to find the open place in the Forum ; and folks 
in quest of one always cry out that there is a breach in 
the Constitution which they only can stop. 

Everything, it seems, is to be retrieved by the Protec- 
tionists, and the throne of artificial scarcity restored. Lord 
George Bentinck tells the farmers that they have only to 
do again what they did in '41 to reinstate monopoly. But 
where is the Peel ? In whom are they to place their trust? 
They are told that all confidence is destroyed ; and the 
new men who say so nevertheless claim the confidence 
which they charge Peel with having totally and for ever 
annihilated ! The lamentations about Sir Eobert Peel's 
perfidy, and the lesson of distrust thereupon, have been 
carried rather too far for policy. It was, to be sure, vastly 
affecting to see the deserted ones wearing the willow, and 
their wailings would touch a heart of stone. The burden 
of the song everywhere was that of Shenstone's despairing 
shepherd : — 

Yet my reed shall resound through the grove 

"With the same sad complaint it begun ; 
How she smiled — and I could not but love ; 

Was faithless — and I am undone. 

But, after all, Lord George Bentinck's faith in Peel is 
not eradicated. He quotes while he abjures him. He 
believes in the Peel past while he renounces the Peel 
present. He solemnly cites the authority of the Peel of 
'41 for the fact that a social revolution must follow the 
abolition of the Corn monopoly, pinning his faith implicitly 
upon Peel, when Peel, as he avers, was playing the de- 
ceiver. Well, and this was part of the stock in trade of 



198 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

pretences. How unreasonable to give up the deceiver 
and yet cleave to the deceits. 

In truth, these Protectionists are more Peelite than 
Peel. They stuck to the Peel errors that Peel has con- 
fessed and abandoned. They are still following the Peel 
of '41 ; he is the breath of their nostrils. They call him 
false, and they swear by his lessons. They bring an action 
against their schoolmaster, and quote his instructions as 
oracular. He told them the repeal of the Corn Laws 
would be a social revolution. A man every now and then 
predicts the end of the world, and there are always fools 
to believe him ; but they are not such dupes as to rely on 
the prediction after the clay that has falsified it, and after 
they have stoned the impostor. Where is the social re- 
volution, or any sign of it ? Lord George Bentinck has sold 
his horses, and that is the only token that everything is to 
be turned topsyturvy. For the mares' tails denoting the 
coming storm we must now look, not to the sky, but to 
Tattersall's. When his hammer knocks down the stud it 
sounds a bidding for the Government, or else the knock- 
down of all institutions. — (1846.) 



In Hogarth's ' Gin Lane ' a man astride of the arm of a 
sign post is busily sawing asunder the beam that supports 
him. This truly Irish application of industry is illustra- 
tive of the present endeavours of a section of the Free- 
trade party, which is doing all it can to cut away the 
support of the Free- trade cause. Their success and 
downfall will be coincident. To call these gentlemen 
penny-wise and pound-foolish would be to understate 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 199 

very much the proportions of their folly, for what they 
risk in their petty economies is in the ratio of much more 
than two hundred and forty to one. We have designated 
the guardians of Free-trade as the Free-trade Conserva- 
tives ; we should describe the other section to which we 
refer as the Free-trade destroyers. They are now going 
hand-in-hand with the Protectionists ; they join in the 
same clamours, speak in every respect the same language, 
use the same watchwords, join in the same devices, go 
out together in the same divisions. — (1850.) 



Is our old comedies the names of the dramatis persona? 
were made to denote the quality or business of the char- 
acters ; and we believe that in like manner, changing only 
one letter, the name of the new Protectionist champion 
expresses his peculiar function. The true name, we take 
upon us to say, is not Foskett, but Fossett. JSTow a fossett, 
as defined by Johnson, is c a pipe inserted into a vessel to 
give vent to liquor.' And so the office of our Fossett of 
Durham House is that of a channel to give vent to what is 
brewing or brewed in the vessel of Protectionist counsels. 
The coadjutor included in the ' we ' of Fossett is obviously 
his partner Spigot, the pair between them playing fast or 
loose according to occasion, and according to their voca- 
tion. Whenever they let fly, we shall know what is now 
fermenting with double double toil and trouble, the grand 
restorative. 

The stag sheds its antlers ; the lobster sheds its ciaws ; 
but it is the marvel of Protection to shed its head 
periodically. It cast off Peel ; it casts off Disraeli ; it will 



200 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

cast off Fossett. Heaven in its mercy has not given the 
breath of life to the man false and foolish enough to 
be permanently, acceptable as a chief to the Protec- 
tionists. Their exigencies of illusion exceed the capa- 
bilities of human deceit. The Protectionist bark is like 
the boat in which Sinbad was ferried by a grim iron 
man on the condition of foundering upon the utterance of 
any good word. So Mr. Disraeli enounces a truth, and 
away goes his support from under him Hudibras con- 
jectured that the pleasure may be as great of being 
cheated as ' to cheat : but there is this peculiarity in the 
agricultural case, that the demand to be cheated is so 
inordinate as utterly to exhaust the capability of supply. 
We shall soon see a great party reduced to this strait 
that, wanting a deceiver, there will be no one to dupe it. 
Let it cherish and make the most of its Fossett, and its 
Growler, and its George Frederick Young, for when these 
are gone where is it to look for a new deceiver of a 
capacity equal to the increasing occasion ? For it is to 
be observed that the task of delusion is of a daily growing 
magnitude. Every day's experience adds to the dimen- 
sions of the fiction which Protection craves for its sus- 
tenance. — (1851.) 



Dickens's Micawber is the exact personification of Pro- 
tection always in ♦ distress ; Mrs. Micawber represents 
the friends who never have deserted, never will desert 
their Micawber, and who devise and discuss what may be 
done for him ' till something turns up,' in this strain : 
4 Corn/ said Mrs. Micawber, ' may be gentlemanly, but it 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 201 

is not remunerative. ... I ask myself this question, if 
corn is not to be relied upon, what is ? ... What is 
the conclusion, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to which I am 
irresistibly brought ? Am I wrong in saying, it is clear 
that we must live ? And the fact is, my dear Mr. Copper- 
field, that toe cannot live without something widely different 
from existing circumstances shortly turning up.' 

Here we have the sum and substance of all the speeches 
at Protectionist meetings, and in what follows we have 
Mr. Disraeli lecturing in the petticoats of Mrs. Micawber : 

' Now I am convinced myself, and this I have pointed 
out to Mr. Micawber several times of late, that things 
cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must 
in a measure assist in turning them up. I may be wrong, 
but I have formed that opinion.' 

And such precisely has been the burden of Mr. Dis- 
raeli's song — ' Something must be done till things turn 
up, but they won't turn up of themselves, odd rot 'em,' 
and the agriculturists must set to work to turn up a 
majority in the next parliament to extricate Mr. Micawber 
from his embarrassments. — (1851.) 



The Italians have a story of a feeble old gentleman who, 
having occasion to dismount from his mule, could by no 
means climb again into the saddle. After many abortive 
essays he prayed to St. Anthony to aid him in the feat, 
and so vigorously did the saint lend his help that with 
one spring the old gentleman vaulted, like ambition, clean 
over the back of the mule into the mire upon the other 
side ; upon which misfortune he cried out, as he wiped 



202 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

away the dirt, ' Too much help, too much help, good 
St. Anthony!' 

And if Mr. Disraeli would not go beyond the mark, 
and fall again into the slough of Protection, he must at 
the coming election deprecate, ' Too much help, too much 
help, good John Bull.'— (1851.) 

THE MAYXOOTH GRANT. 

Sir Eobert Peel draws a dismal picture of Maynooth. 
It bears, he says, ' the character of a deserted barrack 
rather than of a collegiate establishment ; ' having this 
peculiar feature of a deserted barrack, that it is excessively 
.crowded, that there are 440 students, that it is impossible 
to afford each a separate room, and that several are placed 
in one bed. 

The professors are miserably paid, the institution alto- 
gether on a beggarly footing. Is it decent and becoming 
that the priesthood of a nation should be so educated ? 
To English ideas it would certainly seem not. 

We picture to ourselves at once such men as our Phill- 
potts and Blomfielcl lying two in a bed and kicking away 
for room. But our colleges are starting-points for the 
road to preferment, studded with rich seats, palaces, and 
endowments of many thousands a-year. The Irish 
Priesthood have no such prospects before them ; a suffi- 
ciency is the most they can ever rise to, and the lot of 
most is one of penury. 

Yet, though they have no Bishops rolling in wealth, 
and though their preparation at Maynooth has conduced 
little to refinement and accomplishments, they are never- 
theless as active and zealous a clergy as exist on the face 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 203 

of the earth ; and they have one possession which is not 
always amongst the sacerdotal boasts, the confidence and 
affections of their flocks. 

The Irish Priest has nothing else to do but to cultivate 
the affections of his parishioners. He is not a magistrate, 
administering the game-laws and sitting in quarter- 
sessions, searching out crime, not to preach penitence, but 
to apply punishment. He is not a gentleman associating 
with the aristocracy and gentry of the district, giving and 
receiving entertainments. He has not a family to intro- 
duce into society, and to settle in the world. He has 
consequently nothing to do but his one pastoral duty ; 
nothing to think of but his flock, who look to him as 
their only sure friend and adviser in all difficulties and 
tribulations. He often belongs to their class by birth, 
and is just raised above them by the education, such as 
it is, he has received, and by the reverence belonging to 
his office. He has the most intimate knowledge of their 
notions and feelings, and, being so little above them, is 
not too exalted to give them a helping hand ; for, in the 
spiritual as in the material world, the man who is only a 
step above his neighbours is better able to succour and 
raise them up than he who is at the top of a pinnacle. 

But the consequence of all these worldly disadvantages 
is, that the Irish Priesthood possesses an influence which 
statesmen regard with apprehension and jealousy in a 
body unconnected with and independent of Government. 

Judge the tree according to its fruits, and for its sacer- 
dotal uses it has not failed, notwithstanding all the defi- 
ciencies of Maynooth, the education at which is so 
alarmingly apostolical as to scare our Legislature. 



204 POLITICAL STRICTUBJES. 

Take a drawing-room view of the results, and the 
judgment must be quite different. The priests are, for 
the most part, humble, not to say low, ill-informed, per- 
haps coarse, and not the sort of persons to be looked up 
to by gentlemen. But they have little to do with gentle- 
men. The great mass of the Catholics of Ireland are of 
the lower orders, the working classes and the peasantry. 

In England there is a large middle class of educated 
and well-mannered people, with whom the Clergy are 
sufficiently on a level. Our Clergy, though too much 
above the poor, have their usefulness in the next, the 
middle class ; but lift up the Irish Priesthood to the same 
level, and you raise them above the only sphere of their 
utility ; for in Ireland there is no middle class worth 
mention, and the passage is from the Catholic millions to 
the Protestant and small Catholic aristocracies. 

It is easy to say, if there must be Catholic Priests, let 
us ensure good ones, instead of half-educated or unedu- 
cated men ; but you cannot ensure the good by the 
education for the good with the subsequent condition un- 
suited, grating, and disgusting to them. Eaising the 
education without raising the after-lot will be sheer 
injury. It will be making a gentleman, to put him out 
of his place, and to vitiate his whole life with repinings 
and mortifications. 

Jeremy Taylor says that 'the world is like a board 
with square holes and round holes, and that men are like 
square pegs and round pegs, which have often the lot of 
getting placed in the wrong holes, which they never can 
fill or stand in uprightly.' 1 A Catholic Priest turned in 

1 The following note, addressed to Mr. Fonblanque, shows that a claim 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 205 

the improved Maynooth will be a round peg having no 
fitness for the square hole of the voluntary Church. If 
Sir Eobert Peel will take to the carpentry of shaping the 
pegs he must fashion the sockets also, or all will be un- 
easiness and dislocation. — (1845). 

PEEL PEIMJIPLES. 

It is thoughtlessly said that Sir Eobert Peel is a man 
of no principles. As well might it be said that a horse- 
dealer is a man of no horses. The horse-dealer, it is true, 
has no particular attachment to his horses, no desire to 
retain them. He takes them only to part with them for a 
profit ; he buys, sells, changes, and swaps. 

And so it is with Sir Eobert Peel and principles. He 
is a man of all principles, or an all-principled man. He 
has had all in turn, and made his profit of changing them 
as opportunity has offered. 

What is the trader's care for his commodity ? To keep 
it only till he can part with it advantageously ; and such 
is Sir Eobert Peel's care for principles. He is never with- 
out them ; he has always some on hand : but it is by the 
change of them that his political fortunes have been made. 

is made on behalf of the Rev. Sydney Smith for the authorship of this well- 
known illustration : 

' Sunday, April 6. 
1 He can well spare a happy illustration, my dear Sir, but the Round Man 
in the Square Hole is not Jeremy Taylor's, but Sydney Smith's ; at least he 
was not wont to make the good things of others his own, without saving 
that he had done so. He first introduced it into his lectures at the British 
Institution, and afterwards into one of his Essays, / think, in the " Edinburgh 
Review." But he can well spare an illustration to a friend, as I said before, 
and to few would he have felt prouder that his sayings should have been 
attributed than to that master of eloquence whom he so much admired. 
1 Yours, dear Sir, very truly, 

' Catherine Amelia Smith.' — (Ed.) 



206 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

When an Irish worthy was upbraided for selling his 
country, he replied, ' And thanks be to Heaven that I 
have a country to sell.' 

Sir Eobert Peel has the similar cause of thankfulness 
as to the change of his principles. He thanks Heaven 
that he has principles to abandon. — (1845.) 



When Tickell was lying in the kennel dead drunk, and 
Sheridan, nearly as bad, was unable to get him on his 
legs, the wit hiccupped out, ' I cannot help you up, my 
dear friend, but neither will I desert you. I'll lie down 
by you in the gutter.' 

And Sir Eobert Peel, in like manner, when his friends 
roll in the dirt, is ready, if he cannot lift them up, to lie 
down with them — (1845.) 



Sir Eobert Peel is like that benevolent bear in the fable, 
who watched over the slumbers of the sleeping hermit, 
and, seeing a fly light on the holy man's nose, took his 
measures against the disturber by giving a most vigorous 
slap of his paw, which unluckily smashed the hermit's 
nose as well as the insect Like this is the tender care 
of Sir Eobert Peel, and so unfortunate to the objects of 
his solicitude are his Marplot offices. — (1845.) 

THE HOUSE OE LORDS. 

There is a pleasant story of a provincial antiquary's 
journey to visit Hicks's Hall. A hundred miles off every- 
body could tell him about Hicks's Hall. They knew all 
about it, where it was, and what it was like ; nota magis 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 207 

nulli clomus sua. But as the traveller diminished the dis- 
tance from Hicks's Hall the information about it became 
less and less positive, and when two or three miles off no 
one knew it, or could say or conceive anything about it. 

The House of Lords is another Hicks's Hall. A couple 
of months ago everyone knew what the Lords would do 
with the Corn Bill. At that time, if many of the Lords 
did not know their own minds, they were perfectly well 
known to certain shrewd calculating persons. Noses 
were counted, for noses are more cognisable than minds 
(perhaps because a man may or may not have a mind, but 
the possession of a nose is more certain), and lists drawn 
up giving the votes of the Lords to a figure. But as the 
day of proof approaches, and as we get nearer and nearer 
to Hicks's Hall, all these pleasing certainties vanish ; the 
lists so lately handed about have been crumpled up and 
pocketed ; and the knowing ones, who smiled so scornfully 
at any distrust, have begun to make faces as long as their 
former muster-rolls of contents. They say that the proxies 
bother them. They can see their way on the second 
reading, but in committee they are at sea. For the second 
reading there is to be a majority, but the question is 
whether or not the amendment of a moderate fixed duty 
will be carried, and with what consequences ! 

But, if you would know unerringly what the Lords will 
do, peer into coffee grounds, fling an apple-peel to the 
ground after the prescribed ceremonies, try the sortes 
Virgiliance, ask Mrs. Harris, or, last and best, consult a 
cunning woman on Epsom race-ground. Be sure of one 
thing only, that nothing ever happens according to reason- 
able expectation ; and if you are told that the Lords must 



208 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

do this or that, because of such and such consequences if 
they take any other course, be quite certain that the line of 
conduct so mapped out will never come to pass.— (1846.) 



We have now arrived at that period of the Session 
when the proceedings of the Lords bear all the ap- 
pearance of an obituary recording the demise of measures 
too good for this House of Peers. To celebrate the merits 
of the departed, severally and separately, and to lament 
their fates, and to direct indignation against the de- 
stroyers for each work of mischief and malice, would now 
be as impossible as to pronounce eulogies on the victims 
in a general massacre, and to denounce severally and 
separately each instrument in an army of executioners. 
When this work of Herod is acting, the escape of a 
Moses is far more remarkable than the spectacle of any 
number of the murdered innocents ; and the most sur- 
prising thing witnessed in the House of Lords is the defeat 
of the Duke of Wellington's attempt to strangle the Slave 
Trade Suppression Bill. A majority for Ministers in the 
House of Lords, in spite of the Duke of Wellington's 
opposition, is indeed a portentous novelty. We remark 
the matter, however, only for its oddity, for we do not 
imagine so vain a thing as any improvement in the con- 
duct of the House of Lords. So long as the constitution 
of the irresponsible branch of the Legislature remains 
unaltered, its prevailing propensities will continue un- 
changed. The rehiedy will grow out of the exhaustion 
of the public patience, which, great as it is, must be 
brought to an end by the drafts so continually drawn upon 
it. Balzac, in his Peaa de Chagrin, has imagined a 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 209 

talisman which satisfies every wish of its possessor, but 
with these conditions : that upon the fulfilment of each 
wish the peait de chagrin contracts, and that, when it is 
wasted away altogether by the process of diminution, the 
owner perishes with his talisman. The Lords have their 
peau de chagrin. They have the power of gratifying 
their factious desires : but with the satisfaction of each 
evil wish the tenure of their power is slowly but steadily 
dwindling away. — (1839.) 

DUKES TO THE FROXT ! 

When Partridge, having seen Garrick in ' Hamlet/ was 
asked which he thought the best actor in the play, he 
answered, ' The king, of course ! ' the blockhead supposing 
that the merit went with the precedence. The fat-headed 
Protectionists share in Partridge's views, and think that a 
marquis must be a better champion than a simple com- 
moner. All this is mighty pleasant to their adversaries. 
It is well to be opposed by a party which rates a Marquis 
of Granby so highly, and a Disraeli so lowly. With the 
Dukes' sons and Dukes themselves in the front of the 
battle, and the only swordsman of prowess in the rear, 
the phalanx is not very formidable. — (1846.) 

ARMY REFORM. 

The Duke of Wellington passes for a man of excellent 
sense, and a vast fund of good sense he has in him ; but it 
shares possession of his mind with a great deal of preju- 
dice, and each has its separate sway and never interferes 
with the other. There is nothing logical in the Duke's 
mind ; whether he be right or whether lie be wrong, he 

r 



210 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

cannot show cause for it. If lie comes to a just con- 
clusion, a hundred to one that the reasoning for it is 
faulty. His propositions are often identical; and the 
petitio principii is his favourite battle-horse. 

He tells us that the discipline of the army is an essential 
of its existence, and he concludes therefore that the cat- 
o-'nine-tails cannot be dispensed with ; but he does not 
show, or attempt to show, that the cat is necessary to the 
discipline of the army. He observes indeed that, after 
the abolition of flogging in the Indian army, mutinies 
followed and corporal punishment was restored ; but is 
it certain the Indian army mutinied to bring back the cat? 
Is it clear that the Duke has not mistaken the post hoc for 
the propter hoc, incidence for causation? 

There may be risk in the sudden abolition of the pun- 
ishment ; but this does not prove that the punishment has 
worked well, for there are many tilings working notoriously 
very ill which cannot be abruptly stopped without danger. 
When we get into a vicious system, the difficulty of getting 
out of it is always created ; but this difficulty is not to be 
mistaken for a sign of merit in the system. 

The Duke's professional prejudice makes him cling to 
the cat, while his good sense makes him admit that the 
less it is used the better, and look forward to witnessing 
its total abolition. Will that be when we have a better 
army ? No, the Duke declares that the army is alifcfdy 
excellent. We have, as Mrs. Gore says, ' the best-flogged 
army in the world/ and the Commander-in-Chief pro- 
nounces it also the best in the world ; so that it is not 
upon any improvement in the army, already so perfect, 
that the lash is to be abandoned. The Duke's reasoning 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 211 

cannot be followed. The scourge is good and bad in it ; 
bad, inasmuch as the less of it the better ; indispensable 
for the best army in the world in one breath, and never- 
theless to be got rid of in a few years, when the army 
can hardly deserve more praise and less Hogging than it 
now does. 

But the Duke feels that the present proposed restric- 
tions on flogging are the virtual abolition, and that the 
mere name of the once terrible punishment is retained. 
The cat has lost all its lives but the last, which is contracted 
to a span. The maximum of the punishment will seldom 
or never be inflicted. The number of lashes will probably 
range from twenty to thirty, which will not disable the 
sufferer or consign him to the hospital ; and a punishment 
so repugnant in its nature, and at the same time compara- 
tively so little effectual, will soon dwindle into disuse. — 
(1846.) 

The Duke of Wellington is not, and never has been from 
the date of the Peace, a willing military reformer. He 
did what he could to reform the army when it was the 
instrument with which he had to work to serve his country, 
and to make his own great renown. But, those objects 
attained, nothing was done in the way of improvement 
from '15 to '33, and no one measure of military reform 
that we are aware of has originated with the Duke. The 
best that can be said of him is, that he has submitted to 
measures of improvement. He has consented to military ' 
reform as he consented to Catholic Emancipation and the 
repeal of the Corn Laws against his opinions. He thinks . 
that the country does not need a better army than the one 

p2 



212 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

he led to victory. Blackguards made fighting soldiers in 
his time, and he would be for working up the same 
material, relying on the same results. He does not pay 
himself the just compliment of remembering that we may 
not in all times have a Wellington to remodel and form 
an army in the face of an enemy. 

Prejudiced, however, as the Duke is against all reforms, 
his prejudices are not of a force to oppose him inflexibly 
to changes against which his authority would be decisive. 
He dislikes and distrusts, but acquiesces. He has no 
faith in his want of faith. He damns with faint praise, 
but does not obstinately thwart. Eeform goes always 
against his grain, but Conservatism is not less out of his 
habit. It is easier to get him to advance against the 
bias of his prejudices, than to fix him in a resistance 
unsupported by reason ; but then, as he moves on malgre 
lui, you hear the creaking and grating of his adverse 
prejudices. — (1847.) 

BLUB BOOKS. 

Mr. Anstey's notice of motion for papers occupies eight 
folio pages in the Vote List. The documents he calls for 
would be about as voluminous as the Statutes at Large, 
and would probably occupy the Foreign Office months in 
copying. The expense of the printing would be several 
hundred pounds. 

Yet Mr. Anstey's motion wants comprehensiveness. 
The true scope and shape of the motion should be for 
an account of everything secret and ostensible done in 
the Foreign Department from '29 to the present time, 
with an account also of what has been left undone, • if 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 213 

any,' — a qualification very frequent in Mr. Anstey's 
notices. 

There is a notice of motion we should very much like 
to see on the Vote List. It is a return of what meddling 
busy-body Members cost the country in the expense of 
printing, and wasting the time of clerks in public de- 
partments. It would be good to charge the places that 
send such Members to Parliament with the expenses of 
their folly in waste of paper, print, and time. 

Bluebeard tried the curiosity of his wives by a blue^ 
chamber ; had it been a blue book, the ladies would have 
stood the test. The public now vicariously pay the 
penalty for curiosity of idle Members of Parliament. 
The bee, as Swift says, is not a busier creature than a 
blockhead. 

When Mr. Anstey's hundred blue books are printed, 
it would be well to have a return of the persons, ' if any/ 
who have looked beyond the covers of them. For 
State secrets there is no depository so safe as the Blue 
Book— (1847.) 

THE MONSTER MOTION. 1 

We are sorry to say that Mr. Anstey does not get on 
with Lord Palmerston's treason or get off with his head. 
The House leaks at a terrible rate under the weight of 
his oratory and argument ; and the task of filling sieves 
with water seems as feasible as that of getting forty 
members to listen to the motion about everything that 
has been done everywhere, and the Foreign Secretary's 

1 A threatened impeachment of Lord Palmerston for dereliction of duty 
as Minister for Foreign Affairs. (Ed.) 



214 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

treasons therein, from 1830 to 1848. Mr. Anstey had a 
good start ; he opened with a House of between three and 
four hundred members ; but, before he got to Turkey in 
1833, he had melted his audience down to less than forty. 
His views are obviously dissolving views. Every word of 
his speech must have shot a member out of the House. The 
feelings of the unhappy orator, seeing the stream ebbing 
through the door, can only be compared to those of the con- 
vict in his last hour watching the grains dropping through 
the sand-glass. ; There goes my speech,' must have been 
his reflection at every fresh disappearance. A French 
journalist said : Every day of my life is a leaf in my book. 
Poor Mr. Anstey must have thought : Every word in my 
Speech is a member in the lobby. The impeachment is, 
however, perhaps to come out by instalments ; the present 
being a farthing in the pound, as it were, and the next 
beginning at 1833, and giving us a small continuation of 
the great treason ; but at this rate when shall we get at 
Lord Palmerston's head? And it will be remembered 
that his treasons are all going on in the meanwhile, like a 
house on fire, and that Mr. Anstey's speeches are by no 
means of a fastness to overtake them. As well might a 
donkey pursue a hare. Eussia will have made a province 
of us before Mr. Anstey has effected the thousandth part 
of the exposure of Lord Palmerston's perfidies. 

We submit the question to calculation. If 400 mem- 
bers be reduced to 39 by Mr. Anstey's examination of 
Lord Palmerston's policy in Turkey from '30 to '33, how 
many members would it require to make a House for 
him, while he reviews everything that has been done 
everywhere for the last eighteen years, and catalogues 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 215 

the countless treasons of t he Foreign Secretary? Taking 
the present width of the door for escape, our estimate is 
that 50,000 members would be requisite at the very least 
to keep up the necessary dam-head of auditory. Mr. 
Anstey empties the House at the rate of 323 members in 
20 minutes; three members walk out abreast in every 
line of the report in the ' Times.' His speech, according to 
the notice of motion, would make adjourned debate 
for a month, but his auditory melt from it at the rate of 
15 fugitives a minute. Never was there seen such a dis- 
proportion yawning — yawning in every sense — between 
supply and demand. 

AJST) WHAT CAME OF IT. 

Mr. Anstey's infernal machine, to blow up the character 
of Lord Palmerston, has gone, off with the whiff and tiny 
crack of a pop-gun. 

When John Kemble was asked what lie thought of 
Conway the actor, he answered, in his drawling, phleg- 
matic way, ' He is a very tall young man.' 

The same sort of account in mensuration may- be given 
of Mr. Anstey's speech. It was a very long speech. As 
an act of memory it was thought extraordinary, but, by a 
happy dispensation, the speaker who had memory for all 
is the only mortal man who has memory for any part of 
it. It was what the Irish call a great big nothing, a huge 
bladder of fetid gas, the escape of which made every 
man hold his nose. Foul words and foul imputations 
constituted the whole farrago, 

Mr. Urquhart, who primed and loaded Mr. Anstey, of 
course vouched for the truth of his charges. So Addison 



216 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

tells us of a certain quack who used to parade the streets 
with a boy going before him, proclaiming, ' My father 
cures all manner of diseases ; ' to which the charlatan 
solemnly added, ' The boy speaks the truth. 5 

These two gentlemen see the prudence of not appearing 
in their own parts. Each feels that he looks too ill in his 
own. 

In a clever French novel, two gentlemen who have not 
a change of clothes are put to their wit's-end by their 
host's adverting to the etiquette of changing dress for 
dinner. ' How,' said one, ' can we change our dress when 
we are not worth another suit ? ' ' Oh,' said his friend, 
6 nothing can be more easy — you put on my clothes, and 
I will put on yours.' So we have Mr. Anstey in the 
threadbare garb of Mr. Urquhart, and anon Mr. Urquhart 
in the guise of Mr. Anstey. But enough of this foolery. 
We have said more than we ought to have said of this 
egregious pair and their burlesque impeachment, 'an 
idiot's tale, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' 

THE DEMONSTRATION REVERSED. 

The Chartists have tried their strength and proved their 
weakness ; but they have also rendered the invaluable 
service of showing the immense force ready to come for- 
ward for the support of the laws, the preservation of the 
peace, and the defence of the Government. Upon the 
most moderate calculation the odds were ten to one 
against the Chartist muster, not including the military in 
reserve or the police on duty. As for the Chartist 
assemblage, it was short of the crowd always to be col- 
lected to see a boxing-match or a cock-fight. If Mr. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 217 

Feargus O'Connor had given out that on the 10th of April 
he would, at one o'clock in the afternoon, jump into a 
quart bottle, he would have collected ten times the number 
of people to witness in due course the postponement of 
the exploit, And certainly, whenever he packs a quarter 
of a million of Chartists on Kennington Common, jumping 
into a quart bottle will to him be a feasible and easy un- 
dertaking. The largest calculation gives 20,000 to the 
meeting of Monday, and boys made a large portion of 
that number. As another considerable portion must have 
been the marauders of London, it is clear that the bulk 
of the London Chartists have no disposition to commit 
themselves to the chances of involvement in outrage. 

In no other country in the world could what occurred 
last Monday and the preceding days take place, — an in- 
surrection for the overthrow of the Government regularly 
announced ; the insurgents from the country invited to 
come up by the early trains ; the prohibition of the meeting 
and procession as illegal by the Government, without 
the arrest or interruption in any way of any of the 
ringleaders concerned; the calm, quiet attitude of the 
middle-classes, gentry, and aristocracy to encounter the 
threatened insurrection, men rising perhaps half an hour 
earlier than usual to shave and dress, and go upon con- 
stable's duty against the threatened rebellion, or to garrison 
buildings and stand prepared for defence with more serious 
weapons than staves ; then, in the very Legislature, on the 
preceding Friday, the ringleader taking his part as if no 
sort of reproach or suspicion attached to him, and, after the 
failure of his attempt, going to the Home Office to report 
proceedings, and announce the distressing fact that in 



218 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

requital for his patriotism his toes had been trodden upon 
and his pockets picked — no bad foretaste of revolution, a 
specimen in little at the beginning of what would come on 
a larger scale at the end. In England only could treason- 
able preparations be so dealt with ; and it is therefore in 
England only that such preparations end in such abortive 
conclusions. There is full liberty to play the braggart, 
full liberty to play the fool, full liberty to run the head 
against the wall, and full resolution to maintain the 
barriers of order, and to stand by them manfully. 

For the defence of order the middle-classes of England 
are, in Homeric phrase, the bulwark of the war. To the 
virtue of our institutions we owe the existence of the most 
numerous and best-conditioned middle-class in the w^orld ; 
■and as they have been produced by virtue of our free in- 
stitutions, so they become preservative of them in turn. 
There are many faults in our Government, but the mere 
fact of the existence of our middle-classes, as they are, is 
decisive evidence of the balance of merit in it ; and into 
these middle-classes any industrious artisan can ascend, 
and thousands are continually ascending. 

The Chartist delegates are extremely indignant that the 
cold water of illegality was thrown on their proposed 
procession by the Government, and that precautions were 
taken against the fulfilment of their menaces, which ren- 
dered them impracticable. It was hard that the Govern- 
ment would not quietly suffer itself to be overthrown. 

Why are they so wilful to struggle with men ? 

Why do not Ministers leave the public offices to be 
sacked, the magazines and arsenals to be stormed and 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 219 

pillaged, the streets to be occupied by a rabble, the 
houses to be gutted and fired? And parasites of the 
populace (for the populace has its parasites and sycophants 
as Courts have theirs) have in Parliament complained 
of the precautions which reduced the- meeting of Monday 
to impotency and insignificance; Mr. Thompson especially, 
the member for the Tower Hamlets, averring that his 
Christian heart was shocked by the preparations of the 
Government to put down outbreak ; his Christian heart 
not having been in any manifested degree shocked by the 
atrocious menaces of the pike and the fire-brand, which 
have warned Government to be on its guard against the 
most criminal enterprises. Let the promises of the worst 
violence be compared with the measures of defence, and 
the forbearance exercised. Certainly nothing could 
be completer than the arrangements for the safety of the 
town. Every contingency was foreseen and provided 
against. It is easy now to deride the preparations as dis 
proportioned to the event, but the event was dwarfed by 
the very measures of prevention. The one was so small 
because the other were so great. Had the preparations 
been less the issue might have been reversed. 

It is a grand fact for the world that the assemblage 
which was to overthrow the Government of Great Britain 
was scattered and dispersed without the appearance of a 
single soldier, and in the presence of a small part only of 
the immense available civil force. 

But those who complain of the military and other pre- 
parations held in reserve, may be assured not only that 
such arrangements will always be provided to meet illegal 
violence and crush it in its outset, but that there is also 



220 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

in the minds of the classes which support the laws 
the settled resolution, in the event of extreme necessity, 
not to trifle with the exigency, and to exercise such 
vigour in repression of tumult as to bring it most shortly 
to an end. True policy and true humanity counsel this 
course, and, if the guardians of the peace find themselves 
compelled to resort to the last means of defence against 
armed aggression, they will take. care to do so effectually, 
and in such wise that the stress of the chastisement shall 
fall on the foremost in the wickedness. 

Often and often as the example of England has served 
the world, never did it render a greater, never a more 
signal, service than last Monday. The issue was looked 
for by all Europe with the misgivings of good men and 
the hope of bad spirits. Our enemies were everywhere 
exulting, and so confident were they of the event, deem- 
ing the triumph of revolution certain, that the news was 
by anticipation spread that London was in the hands of 
the Chartist populace. The intelligence presently follows 
that London has not even been disturbed by a riot, the 
great bulk of its population having turned out, from the 
Duke to the coal-whipper, to preserve the peace and 
support the laws. Walter Scott supposes the retreat, 

Where, while the tempest sways, 
Scarce are boughs waving ; 

and while Europe is swept by the hurricane, England 
alone is hardly stirred. She floats the ark on the Euro- 
pean deluge of revolution, and scarcely feels the agitation 
of a ripple. 

But to what is this security owing ? — to the knowledge 
which every intelligent man has, that upon the mainte- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 221 

nance of order depends his all ; that his condition must 
be impaired by any public calamity ; that commotion 
must cost him dear ; that revolution would be followed 
by ruin and beggary. Every part of our social system is 
sympathetic, a wound anywhere is felt everywhere, the 
nerves have their ramifications throughout. Conse- 
quently each, in acting for the good of all, does .his best 
for himself. The policy of every man is to spare no 
exertion, no petty sacrifice, for the maintenance of peace 
and order. To keep his house over his head and his 
family in safety, he is ready to turn out in the streets to 
repress tumult. The result is a security which will richly 
reward those who have so wisely and honourably contri- 
buted to it. Capital will take refuge in the only safe 
country in Europe, and her industry will be in demand to 
supply the wants of nations whose industry has been para- 
lysed by commotion and insecurity. — (1848.) 

EXAMPLES FOR YOUNG IRELAND. 

It appears that the lessons of the Four Days in Paris 
have not been thrown away on the Young Irelanders. 
The cruelties have filled them with admiration and emu- 
lative aspirations. The ' Cork Constitution ' states that at a 
meeting of one of the Confederate Clubs three enthu- 
siastic cheers were given for that pattern of all Irishwomen, 
Madame Le Blanc, who boasted of having cut off the 
heads of five or six youths of the Garde Mobile. We can 
imagine then the delight with which other kindred ex- 
amples have been received, such as the mutilation of 
prisoners, and the assassination of General Brea and his 
aide-de-camp in cold blood. Many circumstances must 



222 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

tend to heighten the admiration of this last exploit. The 
General was inveigled within the barricades, and then 
made prisoner, and told that if the advancing troops did 
not retire or lay down their arms he and his suite should 
be shot. Upon the approach of the troops, in despite of 
his threat, an insurgent aimed a musket at the General ; 
but a woman, uninspired with the spirit of Madame Le 
Blanc, threw herself before him and shielded him with her 
person ; the rebel tore her away, deliberately stepped 
back a few paces, took a cool aim and shot the General 
in the abdomen, the cruellest wound that he could inflict. 

Another discharged a fusil at the forehead of the aide- 
de-camp, and while the youth was shrieking with the 
anguish of the wound, his skull pierced by the bullet, and 
his eyes scorched by the fire, a companion hacked him 
with a hatchet, and they then amused themselves with de- 
facing the corpse, so that not a trace of the human visage 
remained. The names of these wretches have escaped our 
memory : but Young Ireland will treasure them up for 
imitation with Madame Le Blanc. The murder of the 
Archbishop of Paris, too, must have its honour in Young 
Ireland, though not so fine as chopping off heads and in- 
flicting torturing wounds. 

The use of nails and rough or sharp- edged pieces of 
metal for bullets must delight the imagination of the 
readers of the ' Felon ' and the ' Tribune,' and with extreme 
unction must they have read that the insurgents had re- 
course to the burning vitriol which their Mitchell had 
recommended. In a word, all that has made the rest of 
the world thrill with horror seems to have made the dis- 
ciples of Mitchell thrill with pleasure and burn with 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 223 

emulation. Oh ! that they had but some red-coat pri- 
soners, some of whose heads might be chopped off by the 
fair hands of Erin's daughters, while others might be shot 
at leisure in the most sensitive places, maimed, mutilated, 
and in death turned to obscene mockery ! 

It is a peculiarity of Irish rebellion that it counts so 
much on the co-operation of women, who are to be no- 
thing less than unsexed for its purposes. Women are to 
squirt vitriol, and women are to put on hoops, not hoops 
on their own persons, but hoops on the persons of Her 
Majesty's soldiers, hoops wrapped round with tow steeped 
in turpentine and fired. In a word, the women of 
Ireland are to be an army of Furies in the rebellion which 
is to come on after the harvest. Now, it seems strange 
that Irishmen, who are not the least confident of man- 
kind, never depend on their own hands for what they 
propose in the way of outbreak. At one moment they 
look to America, at another to France, for help, and at 
last, in default of these, they begin to count on what the 
women can do for them, animated with the spirit of the 
poissardes of '93. Surely it would be better for the men 
to draw a little more on their own daring than to unsex 
the women for the destruction of the Saxon. Bold men 
send the women to the rear when they go to war. 
Young Ireland proposes to put the ladies in the front of 
the battle, exacting of them a courage more than mascu- 
line, and a wickedness more than human. 

The ' Felon ' newspaper has run its short course. An 
apter name should be chosen for the next organ of the 
Mitchell doctrines. The ' Fiend ' should be the title. No 
other name can justly represent the spirit and objects of 



224 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

the lessons that have outraged all humanity in a part of 
the Irish Press. It is well for the world that the wicked- 
ness of the writers so far outruns their daring. They far 
surpass Marat in truculent sanguinary imagination, but 
they are mice in action. — (1848.) 

PRIVILEGES OF PARLIAMENT. 

We confess ourselves very conservative when the privi- 
leges of the Commons are concerned, and we are es- 
pecially jealous of committing these in any manner or 
degree to judicial keeping ; for the tendency of the 
Judges has ever been adverse to popular privileges, 
wherever they have had the power of defining their scope. 

THE DROPPED MEASURES. 

A minister is like the tavern waiter of Joe Miller, who, 
having to serve a Scotch gentleman with a pint of wine, 
was desired to decant it in the presence of the canny 
guest. He did so ; then, having filled the measure of the 
decanter with apparent care and scrupulousness, was 
asked by the customer if both' were exactly equal in 
quantity; and having given the strongest assurances in the 
affirmative, hinting that the portion in the decanter was 
rather the better of the two, ' In that case,' said the 
Scotsman, c give me the half in the black bottle, for I fancy 
it most.' 

So, at the beginning of a session, some gentleman 
should ask the first butler which are to be the decanted 
and which the black-bottle portions of business, and they 
should claim for their share the moiety which is intended 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 225 

to be reserved or put by, as it is invariably, like the 
Scotchman's chosen half of the bottle, 4 fancied the most.' 
One of the favourite thoughts of the human mind is the 
early doom of excellence. Sophocles has it, and one of 
his characters deplores that the heroes of the Trojan war 
have passed away while Thersites survives. Shakespeare 
says, 'This sorrow's heavenly, it strikes where it does 
love ; ' another poet, ' Heaven sends its favourites early 
doom.' And it would seem to be with bills as with 
humanity. Those that live stand in the pillory ; those 
that drop into the limbo of abortive legislation have 
goodly epitaphs inscribed upon them, assigning all the 
virtues and the tribute of a nation's tears. — (1848.) 

THE BALLOT. 

This question, however, will not be settled by argu- 
ment. It will be settled, and is all but settled, by prac- 
tical experience. He who wears the shoe best knows 
where it pinches, and it is in vain that the shoemaker 
assures him that the make is perfection, the measure 
exact, and the pain imaginary. Open voting is felt to be 
exposure to intimidation .and injury, and the security for 
successful bribery. It is doomed. The adoption of the 
ballot is now only a question of time, and the un-English 
practice of secret voting will be resorted to as the only 
effective safeguard against the thoroughly English practices 
of bullying and bribing (1848.) 



We do not contend that the frankness of open voting has 
not its recommendations ; we acknowledge that it ha>. 
and rate them highly. If open voting consisted with 

Q 



226 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

honest voting, open voting would be, out of all doubt, 
preferable. But we propose recourse to the ballot be- 
cause the openness of the vote is fatal in a multitude of 
cases to the sincere choice. The ballot is the crypt of 
conscience, the refuge against the foul influences. The 
resort to it is stigmatised as cowardly. It is precisely as 
cowardly as the resort to bolts and bars against the thief 
— strictly analogous in this, that, though not complete 
securities, they are important obstacles to attack. — (1849.) 

THE TALKING NUISANCE. 

Eoger Bacon, having succeeded in making a talking 
head, was so wearied, says the chronicler, with its per- 
petual tittle-tattle that he dashed it to pieces. The tittle- 
tattle of England's talking head is a more serious nuisance 
than that of Eoger Bacon ; but as we cannot do without 
it, instead of knocking it to pieces, we have to consider 
contrivances for putting the break, as it were, on its palaver. 

There was a time when the House could protect itself 
against its bores, but the bores were then few, whereas 
now their name is Legion. Constituencies have indeed 
lately evinced a decided preference for bores, so much so 
that we believe it would be a recommendation, in many 
places, for a candidate to profess the faculties of boring, 
which consist in ready-witlessness, ready verbosity, and 
prate without object and without end. The bores of the 
greatest mark in the present Parliament are Mr. Spooner, 
Mr. Newdegate, Col. Sibthorp, Mr. G. Thompson, Mr. 
Urquhart, and Mr. Anstey. Of these afflicting persons we 
regard Col. Sibthorp as a model, and often the wish escapes 
us : Oh that all bores were like the member for Lincoln ! for 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 227 

his ineptness is as brief as wit. He seldom exceeds three 
lines in the reports, rarely indeed does he reach a dozen. 
No bore draws so little on the patience of the House, no 
bore wastes so little of the public time. To be sure he 
has nothing worth hearing to say, but the nothing he has 
to say he says in few words, which is a rare grace. He 
accurately, indeed, fulfils Solomon's description of a cer- 
tain character, for his bolt is soon shot. Compare him 
with Mr. Urquhart, or Mr. Anstey, or Mr. GL Thompson, 
and you will know how to value him, and rate him as a 
model bore, a pattern to all who have nothing to say, but 
platitudes or extravagances, to be chary of words as they 
are void of sense. — (1848.) 

THE YEAR OF TRIALS. 

Hundreds of pens are now at work to say the worst of 
the passing year, the year of troubles, the year of distress, 
the year of commotions, the year of the complication of 
everything that is bad, the lengthened Saturnalia of the 
evil spirits. Yet there is a satisfactory and cheering view 
to be taken of this black year, and it is that England has 
passed through its trials as bravely as she has done, 
weathering the storm with comparatively so little damage, 
and with the first abatement of its violence manifesting a 
buoyancy beyond the most sanguine hope. 

There has been much distress, much suffering ; but it is 
only amazing that there was not more in such a complica- 
tion of evils and embarrassments; and the tendency to 
improvement, even before the recovery of trade on the 
Continent, denotes the wonderful elastic energy bearing 
up against all depression. With commerce already reviv- 

a2 



228 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

ing, what may we not expect when the settlement of 
affairs on the Continent reopens its markets, and with the 
advantage which our manufacturers must possess over 
rivals whose business has been paralysed by political and 
social convulsions? 

Everything has been put to the severest trial this mo- 
mentous year, and everything has stood the proof; — the 
sense of the country, its attachment to order, its loyalty 
in the most enlarged and exalted meaning of the word, 
have held it firm and undisturbed amidst the shock of 
revolutions ; and its vast resources and commercial 
energies, directed with prudence, have enabled it to meet 
and overcome the most gigantic difficulties, not unscathed 
indeed — that was impossible, but with an amount of loss 
and suffering incomparably less than a priori could have 
been calculated upon by the most sanguine : 

Quod optanti divum promittere nemo 
Auderet. 

The vessel which has so weathered so tremendous a 
tempest can have been in no bad trim, and in no incapable 
hands. 

Yet there are people who talk of the failure of free 
trade, as if free trade could have had a trial other than 
the unfairest in the general paralysis of commerce. The 
thing to be wondered at is, not that our commerce de- 
clined, but that it declined no more than it did, and 
rallied so promptly as it is doing. The bark of free trade 
was launched in a tempest, and the proof of its virtue is 
its battling with and surviving the storm. If it has 
struggled so well through such adverse circumstances, 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 229 

what may it not be expected to do when favoured by 
more tranquil times, and the returning tide of commerce ? 
Free trade in a convulsed, disordered world, following 
upon three years of scarcity at home, could not indeed 
work the miracle of making prosperity ; but it has suc- 
ceeded in resisting ruin, and making the least of inevitable 
loss. What would the system of monopoly have done in 
the same circumstances? It could not have lived an 
hour ; it could not have existed ; the circumstances would 
have doomed it to instant abolition. The first whiff and 
wind of the troubles would have puffed the Corn Laws 
away. Free trade was granted just at the moment when 
grim necessity would have shortly forced it upon the 
legislature, had it been composed exclusively of Bentincks 
and Sibthorps. It has not worked impossibilities ; but 
the restrictive system had the fault that it would not have 
worked at all, nor lived longer than a sieve on the waves 
of the Atlantic— (1848.) 

THE OUTRAGE ON THE QUEEN". 1 

It was excellently remarked by Lord Lansdowne, in the 
few words he addressed to the House of Lords on the 
subject of the outrage to which Her Majesty has again 
been exposed, that there are offences of a nature so odious 
and disgusting, and at the same time so paltry and con- 
temptible, that it is impossible to speak of them either 
with the seriousness which their malignity requires or 
with the contempt which their absurdity excites in every 
reasonable mind. 

1 An Irishman named Hamilton fired a pistol at Her Majesty while driv- 
ing across Constitution Hill on her birthday.— (Ed.) 



230 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

Difficult as it is to take the proper medium in cases of 
this sort, it has nevertheless been taken with the best 
result in the instance before us. The universal burst of 
indignation which met the foul outrage of Saturday showed 
with what unabated respect and attachment the Queen's 
character is regarded by all classes of her subjects ; and 
the quiet manner in which the law has since been left to 
take its course is the best security Her Majesty could 
have received against a repetition of the dastardly 
offence. 

There has been nothing of the procedure which flatters 
the diseased and vulgar appetites for notoriety. There 
has been no feeding of the excitements which are most 
apt to generate such crimes. If a craving for eclat formed 
part of the motive to this last atrocity, the unhappy mis- 
creant has been thoroughly baulked. Not an indication 
of the excitement of Saturday was observable on Monday, 
if we except a few not very creditable newspaper placards 
posted up to , attract stray customers. The outrage has 
been stripped of everything that had a tendency to take 
it out of the ordinary and most commonplace course of 
justice. No theatre has been erected, at the Privy Coun- 
cil or elsewhere, for the indulgence of heroics of any 
kind. Not the least remarkable circumstance in the 
series of attempts against the security and peace of the 
Sovereign, of which we this week record the most con- 
temptible, has been Her Majesty's unruffled and calm 
composure in the midst of general and painful excitement. 
It is an example which the law now imitates, and with the 
best effect. 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 231 

No comment on the previous life or circumstances of 
the culprit is called for. It is clear that he had no 
motive for what he did except, perhaps, his wish to make 
himself a day's wonder and obtain a provision without 
labour at the public expense. In the first he has been 
baulked already, and in the second his disappointment 
will be still more severe. We are almost tempted to 
regret that the chastisement which awaits his crime could 
not have been inflicted on the spot ; but the whipping 
will be of the best possible example when it comes, on 
more formal proof of the prisoner's wanton brutality. We 
had occasion to remark only last week on the excellent 
fitness of such a punishment, if so administered as at once 
to carry disgrace and exclude sympathy, for delinquencies 
of a brutal and unmanly character. Such crimes are thus 
met upon their own level, and the depraved and degraded 
nature is put under the check of a counter discipline as 
degrading, as humiliating, and base. 

The possibility of any serious attempt upon Her Majesty's 
life is not assumed in these remarks. History contains 
instances of rulers whose existences have been of more or 
less value to the people ruled : but no example is recorded 
of a life so bound up with the most important interests of 
every class of the people as that of the present Sovereign 
of England. A greater calamity to the world, in its ex- 
isting state, could hardly be imagined than any serious 
danger to what is so precious and so dear to millions 
over the whole earth. But hardly of less importance 
than life itself is the sense of security which gives peace 
to life, and we should have been prepared to advocate 



232 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

any measure of extreme severity by which this object in 
Her Majesty's case might have been best obtained. Hap- 
pily such measures are not called for. — (1849.) 

MR. DISRAELI AND THE FARMERS. 

As the parish clerk made it a rule not to weep at mis- 
fortunes out of his own parish, so Mr. Disraeli explains- 
that he makes it a rule not to talk politics out of his own 
county ; but the desire to see ' a genuine body of English 
yeomen,' which, it seems, can only be met with in Essex, 
has induced him to deviate from his rule, and to attend 
a certain Agricultural and Conservative Club at Heding- 
ham. 

In. the Facetia? of Hierocles it is written that a scholar in 
a tempest at sea bound himself to an anchor, observing 
that it would be strange indeed if what had saved many a 
stout ship would not serve his turn. The anchor was 
this wiseacre's sinking fund. But sinking is not always 
to be eschewed. The tendency to float requires coun- 
teraction for some purposes. Men who go down to the 
bottom of the sea with the diving apparatus use heavy 
weights attached to their shoulders and feet. These are 
their sinking funds. Mr. Disraeli finds the agricultural 
interest too buoyant, and is for ballasting it, to send it 
down to those depths in which it may find the pearls and 
treasures of Conservatism. — (1849.) 

THE UNPROTECTED FARMER. 

When Punch shall have finished his diverting Scenes from 
the Life of an Unprotected Female, we hope he will amuse 
the public with Scenes from the Life of the Unprotected 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 233 

Farmer. An objection to our suggestion may be that it 
would be too much of a parallel, and that the unprotected 
farmer would be nothing more than the unprotected 
female in top boots, corduroys, and dingy upper Benjamin. 
The helplessness of the two is indeed much alike ; the 
vast alarm at every little difficulty ; the propensity to look 
for assistance and extrication from embarrassment to any- 
thing but self-exertion ; the readiness to be the dupe of 
any impostor offering help, combined with a large fund 
of distrust misdirected, — all these are common to both. 

The farmer is now in precisely the predicament of the 
Unprotected Female in the perilous adventure of effecting 
a crossing, the transitionary stage. Like the other help- 
less unprotected being, he is aghast at the different alarms 
raised around him ; he stands stock still, when he ought 
to move steadily on ; he makes a blind rush, when he 
ought quietly to wait his time and opportunity ; he is beset 
with impostors tendering advice and assistance ; upon hold- 
ing up his finger he is surrounded by rival conductors, 
and fiercely contended for. Disraeli, Lord Stanhope, 
Feargus O'Connor, Cobden, Bright, strive to carry him 
off in their respective vehicles, and the Unprotected is 
torn to pieces in the tumult of conflicting guides. 

Not only are the situations of the Unprotected Female 
of Punch strictly analogous to those of the Unprotected 
Farmer of the United. Kingdom, but the very dialogue 
appropriate to the one is often suitable to the other, 
changing merely the name of Female to Farmer. With 
this variation observe how a passage from the Margate 
adventure speaks the feelings of the agrest mind, and the 
solicitations addressed to them : 



234 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

' Unprotected Farmer. What a poor unprotected farmer 
is exposed to, nobody would think. 

'Mr. Disraeli. Why should any farmer be unpro- 
tected ? What would not one dare to be the protector of 
a farmer ? ' 

The moral of Punch's Unprotected Female is, that 
women are in the habit of having so much protection 
thrown around them that, when they happen to be 
obliged to shift for themselves without it, they are utterly 
helpless, void of common sense and common under- 
standing, destitute of resource, full of vain fears, never 
ready for anything, ever in a state the opposite to the 
prepared, and falling into bad hands, instead of acting 
discreetly and independently for themselves. 

But Unprotected Females cannot always proceed in this 
awkward way ; every day's experience without protection 
advances them in the art of getting on like reasonable 
beings. They do not always stick in the middle of 
crossings, they are not always the dupe of impostors 
saving them from imaginary dangers ; and the unprotected 
farmer will not be behind his unprotected sister in profit- 
ing by the new practice of taking care of himself, instead 
of being, as they advertise at low lodging-houses, done 
/or, as formerly, in more senses than one. 

Like the Unprotected Female, the Unprotected Farmer 
upon the first encounter with his troubles is overwhelmed 
and in the last depths of despair; but he has only to 
look around him and to sec throngs of folks getting 
on expertly and well, who have also in their time 
known what it was to pass from the protected state, and 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



learnt to shift incomparably better for themselves. The 
beginning cannot be made without its rubs and annoy- 
ances ; but with their first shock the worst is over, 
and the faculty of adaptation has its wholesome com- 
mencement, In the transitional stage, in effecting the 
passage of the crossing, the first feeling of the Unprotected 
Farmer, like that of the Unprotected Female, is an im- 
petuous desire to be carried back, and an earnest prayer 
for a restoration to the former status ; but this cannot be. 
To roll on. not to turn back, is the destiny of the world ; 
and to reconcile the Unprotected Farmer to this necessity 
he must remember what was his condition as a protected 
farmer, in which state his language was never other than 
the language of complaint, full of representations of dis- 
tress, and groans of impending ruin. He has been crying- 
wolf all the days of his life. We will not deny that a 
pinch has come upon him ; we always foresaw and foretold 
that he must undergo it ; and three years ago, when he 
was getting high prices, and when the manufacturers were 
suffering, we did not conceal the truth that the farmer's 
comparative prosperity was as little to be taken as 
evidence of the working of the new commercial policy as 
the distress of the trading interests, and that the farmer 
could not escape some pains in the change from the 
restrictive to the free-trade system. A combination of 
fortuitous circumstances has aggravated the hardships of 
the middle passage ; and it cannot be fairly taken as an 
example of what is to be expected under free trade, any 
more than the Unprotected Female's predicament in the 
midst of the omnibuses and cabs at Charing Cross is to 



236 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

be taken as the specimen of the tenor of an unprotected 
female's life. We may indeed say to the farmer for his 
consolation in the language of Burns, 

Tho' losses and crosses 

Be lessons right severe, 
There's wit there, ye'll get there, 

Ye'll find nae other where. 

(1849.) 

THE BUDGET MORALISED. 

Who would be a Chancellor of the Exchequer with a 
surplus ? A dog with a bone in his mouth, with a hungry 
pack in pursuit of him, sure of a snap from every tooth, 
is to be envied in comparison with him. Every man's 
hand, every man's voice and vote, are against him. 
Whatever he does he must do wrong. He has to please 
everybody, and angry disappointments menace him in 
every quarter. Every taxed article finds a voice, which 
cries out to him that its relief is the one thing needful. 
Hops, soap, newspaper stamps, paper, windows, tea, 
tobacco, timber, attorneys' certificates, bricks, stamp 
duties, malt, each makes out the best claims, and a 
refusal seems monstrous. But yet, what is a million 
and a half among so many? Nothing short of a 
miracle can satisfy all. The many disappointed claimants 
become savage malcontents, and rage against the financial 
man. And he has brought it all on himself. For this 
he had toiled late and early ; for this he has pinched and 
screwed, and pared; for this he has economised and 
nursed the public means, husbanding resources so as to 
make much of little. The end of all is that he is hunted 
like a hare, every pursuer being set on having his part of 
the coveted substance. Alas! how he must lament 'the 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 237 

fortunate old times when lie was so unfortunate,' the happy 
peaceful days when he sat at ease on an empty chest, 
and when, with a deficiency, he could sing before the 
thief. No Disraeli then made motions for the transfer of 
a million and a half of local burdens to the consolidated 
fund. No Drummond could have mustered a minority 
of a score for a reduction of establishments. No remission 
of duties on hops or abolition of malt-tax was threatened. 
But now that we have waxed fat we kick, and kick the 
financial man who has fattened us. 

A Government is like an individual in the insecure 
countries of the East, whose life is in danger the moment 
it is discovered that he is rich. The rule of prudence is 
to be poor. 

A Government's enriching itself is the same thing as 
fattening itself for the knife. When it is indigent it moves 
no appetites. It may face lions as safely as Don Quixote 
did, because it never occurred to the lions that the knight 
of the dolorous countenance was good to eat. Time was 
when the tooth of no interest cared for Sir C. ' Wood, 
when each thought itself well off to escape the satisfac- 
tion of his wants ; but now the case is altered ; he has 
become succulent, and a pack have been in full cry 
after him. 

For our own parts, we are just like the rest of the 
world as to the budget, certainly not any better, we 
fondly hope not worse. That is to say, we should have 
been best pleased with the removal of our own taxes, 
holding that there is nothing like leather, and that the 
diffusion of the knowledge we impart is better even than 
bricks ; but, if our paper may not be cheapened and 



238 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

advertisements reduced, we had as lief see bricks have 
the preference as any other claimant ; nay, more, we 
believe that the choice has been wisely made for the 
benefit of the poor, for the improved comfort of their 
dwellings, where so much reformation is needed for cleanli- 
ness, health, and morals. At the disposal of the rest of the 
surplus we have no inclination to carp or cavil. It is easy 
to argue that something better might have been done, but 
quite certain that, whatever it might have been, it would 
have been open to not less objection. Anything more 
oTacious than this cannot be said of a Chancellor of the 
Exchequer who had saved a couple of millions, and earned 
the discontents thence accruing. We hope this lesson 
will not make him more cautious in future, and return to 
deficiencies — the only state in which the public is grateful 
for not being called upon to make them good. — (1849.) 

MARTIAL LAW. 

Sir Henry Ward is praised for the promptitude with 
which he proclaimed martial law. ' What is martial law? ' 
asks Colonel Thompson. To which we beg to answer, 
Martial law is not the law of justice. Martial law dis- 
penses with the procedure which has been found the best 
for attaining the ends of justice. Martial law prefers 
dispatch to the discovery of the truth. Martial law is im- 
patient, and eager to make examples ; and not very nice 
whet her or not they may happen to be made upon the 
persons meriting punishment. But what are we saying? 
[s ii not administered by 'officers and gentlemen of 
honour.' and is it to be conceded, or imagined, or whis- 
pered in Gath thai Colonel Trollopc or Captain King can 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 230 

be capable of error ? Bowing to this unanswerable argu- 
ment, we must then ask why martial law, which is so 
much more expeditious, and withal simple, is not the 
customary law, and why this short-cut to justice is re- 
served for extraordinary occasions ? It is better or worse 
than the civil procedure. If better, why does it not 
supersede the worse ? If worse, why is it so lightly re- 
sorted to, and so much commended ? 

In surgery, the parallel to martial law would be turning 
off the surgeon, and employing the carpenter in lieu of him 
to perform amputations and difficult operations. — (1850.) 

DOWNFALL OF THE KUSSELL ADMINISTRATION. 

' All things are faults in the conduct of an unfortunate 
man,' says Marmontel ; ' even in the eyes of his friends, 
his miscarriages are accounted errors ; he is treated as a 
fallen child is treated by its mother, chastised for its mis- 
hap.' Of the truth of this remark Lord John Eussell is the 
present example. He has fallen, and all are agreed that 
he is greatly to blame for falling ; but hardly any two men 
agree about the immediate cause of his fall. ' It was the 
Durham letter,' says one. 'Not a jot,' replies another ; 
' the Durham letter was quite right, and would have 
strengthened him prodigiously if it had been followed 
up by a vigorous anti-Papal measure ; it was the paltry 
bill that destroyed him.' ' The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,' 
interposes a third, ' did just enough in doing next to 
nothing ; — no, it was the house tax in the budget that did 
the mischief. 7 ' The house tax might have been got over,' 
puts in another ; c but the proposal of the income tax, 
with all its injustices unmitigated, doomed Lord John.' 



240 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

'Not a whit,' rejoins a radical reformer, ' the income tax 
is popular, especially with people who don't pay it ; 
Lord John's opposition to Locke King's motion sealed his 
fate.' ' Locke King's division was a flea-bite,' cries a 
staunch Protestant ; ' the Pope has done it all.' 

' Who killed Cock Eobin ? ' is a question calling forth a 
tumult of conflicting responses. Thou canst not say we 
did it, say the Protectionists. The hundred Eeformers are 
strenuous in their denial of any hand in the catas- 
trophe, and protest that they only pushed Lord John on, 
and had no part in pushing him down. The Manchester 
party, too, now protest that nothing was further from 
their wishes than the event which throws everything into 
confusion and uncertainty. All shrink from the responsi- 
bility of any hand in the mischief, contemplating the 
consequences ; but, if these consequences had been more 
duly considered, when lines of action tending to bring 
them about were needlessly and recklessly pursued, more 
forbearant and prudent counsels would have estopped 
what we have now to lament. Last session we warned 
some of the Free-traders that, in joining with the Pro- 
tectionists to harass and embarrass the Government on 
economic questions, they were acting like the man astride 
of the arm of a sign-post, who is busily sawing asunder 
the beam that supports him. We said then, ' They 
know not what they do. They are short-sighted; they 
are self-sufficient ; they think they are outwitting their 
allies for the nonce. They are only outwitting themselves. 
The biters will be the bitten.'— (1851.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 241 



A NEW ALLY. 

The common cry against Lord Palmerston was that he 
had alienated all the allies of England, and left her friend- 
less in the world. In America, however, we had the King 
of the Musquitoes in the closest confederacy with us, and, 
not satisfied with this potent ally, Lord Palmerston had 
taken measures to raise up a new potentate, bound to us 
by the ties of gratitude, in King Akitoye I., of Lagos. 
It cannot, then, be said that we have not two strings to 
our bow. With the Musquitoes and Lagos on our side, 
can we not defy the world ? 

We have set up King Akitoye in business at a very 
small expense, only some eighty killed and wounded. 
Kosoko, the expelled brother of this Akitoye, had usurped 
the throne, and our strict observance of the rule of non- 
interference in the affairs of other nations does not make 
us neutral spectators of usurpations where we can do what 
we like with what is not our own ; nor do we give oppres- 
sors, if weak, credit for the best intentions ; and finding 
that Kosoko was not only a bad man to his brother, but — 
what is worse, and the most unpardonable of all crimes — 
a bad man to the blacks, orders were given to destroy his 
capital, which has been done, and Akitoye set up on the 
ruins. This is of course a great triumph to humanity, 
cheaply purchased at the price of the killed and wounded. 
Christmas was the season appropriately selected for this 
work of charity and brotherly love; and the Bloodhound, 
whose name figures so aptly in philanthropic operations 
on the coast of Africa, was the vessel foremost in the 
service. Well, Her Majesty has a few brave subjects the 

R 



212 POLITICAL ST1UCTUBES. 

less, but she has an ally the more in King Akitoye. Lagos 
is the set off to the Kaffir war ; it balances the African 
account. — (1851.) 

THE DERBY ADMINISTRATION. 

The mother of a family who had a French coxcomb on 
a visit at her house, observing that Monsieur paid very 
marked attentions to her daughter, asked him what his 
intentions were ; to which, unhesitatingly, Monsieur replied, 
' Decidedly not honourable.' Now it would be a sad 
thing to provoke such an explanation as this. How much 
better to enjoy the bliss of ignorance, and to revel for a 
few months in a fool's paradise. 

Ill fares the mortal man 
Too much who knows. 

Let every man think the best of Lord Derby's Adminis- 
tration. Let one-half the country believe it staunch Pro- 
tectionist, the other convert to Free-trade. Let no one 
seek to penetrate the mystery. Sufficient for the day will 
be the evil thereof. Let us all be deceived, and happy in 
our respective delusions. 

There was a pragmatic ambassador in the time of the 
first George, who wrote to his Court, ' Some say that the 
Pretender is dead, others say that he is not dead; for 
my part, I believe neither the one nor the other.' This 
tertium quid will be a very convenient opinion for the 
present occasion. Some say that the Derby Ministry is 
Protectionist, others say that it is not ; for our part, we 
believe neither the one nor the other. 

The Ministry is a Mystery, and woe to the (Edipus who 
presumes to solve the riddle. Davus's is the country's 
part.— (1851.) 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 243 

THE MYSTIFICATION. 

The two opposite parties cannot agree to bear and forbear 
for a season, except with an understanding that one of the 
two is to be the victim at the end of the armistice. Lord 
Derby puts himself, like Macheath, between Polly and 
Lucy, declaring, 

While you thus tease me together, 
To neither a word will I say. 

But the end must be the choice of one of the two rivals 
after the other has been beguiled into patience and 
inaction. 

iEsop tells us of a wolf which had taken possession of 
a cave to rear a litter of whelps. In answer to the request 
of the owner of the place that the wolf would provide her- 
self with other quarters, she pleaded the helplessness of 
her young family, and begged for time to enable her to 
bring up her whelps. The prayer was granted, and at 
the expiration of the term, when possession was demanded, 
the reply was, ' You gave me time for the growth of my 
young ; they are now grown up and strong, and you may 
turn me out if you can beat me and my whole family.' 

Lord Derby's statement amounts simply to this, that he 
' bides his time.' He is not at present strong enough, and 
asks to be allowed to get stronger. — (1851.) 

THE ATTACKS ON PKINCE ALBERT. 

. quo cecidit sub crimine ? Quisnam 
Delator? quibus indiciis? quo teste probavit ? 
Nil liorum. Juvenal. 

Most pernicious is the trite saying that there never is 
much smoke without some fire. As reasonably might it be 

k2 



244 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

said that there cannot be much falsehood without some 
truth. The very nursing mother of calumny is the proverbial 
inference accrediting it from mere volume of rumour. 
The slanderer is encouraged by the foreknowledge that 
he has only to scatter his imputations far and wide to 
obtain some belief in them; he foreknows that much 
noise will be taken to argue substance, and that he has 
only to fill the air with calumny, and that people will 
take it in and breathe it out again, and pass it thus from 
mouth to mouth. 

There is an offence common in society, which is to 
calumny what in Law misprision is to treason. The 
misprision of calumny is the entertainment of it upon the 
grounds of the pestilent saying we have quoted, that 
there must be some truth at the bottom of it because of 
its magnitude ; and in this way everyone helps on the 
lie to additional credit. And, as it grows in falsehood 
and malignity, larger and larger is the allowance for the 
fire smouldering under so much smoke. We repeat that 
nothing can be more irrational, more mischievous, more 
unjust and cruel than this rule of credence, which mightily 
encourages the assailant of reputation, and makes the 
activity of his attacks secure its success, up at least to a 
very injurious point. 

Most perverse indeed is the proneness of the world to 
think of the truth that may be in common defamatory 
rumours, instead of the falsehood that must be in them. 
There is nothing more certain than that a fact and the 
report of it are never in exact correspondence. There is 
sure to l)e exaggeration ; nay, so much of course is ex- 
aggeration that, if any fact were reported in the precise 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 245 

language of truth, it would be misunderstood, large allow- 
ance being always made in the interpretation of the. 
narrative for the usual excess in expression. How much 
better, then, it would be if people would think of the 
large amount of falsehood which enters into all they 
hear, instead of the particle of truth which may be, or 
may not be, at the bottom of a piece of ill-natured 
gossip. 

A few weeks ago it was our ungracious task to dispute 
the seasonableness and fitness of a statue in honour of 
Prince Albert. We have now to protest against throwing 
down the reputation of the Prince, if not upon mere 
suspicion, upon no better ground than on dits and stories, 
carrying on the face of them this stamp of falsehood, that 
they must have been divulged by the persons implicated 
in them, whose motives to concealment must have been the 
very strongest. Is it to be believed that, if Prince Albert 
had unconstitutionally intermeddled in the councils of 
the nation, the Ministers, whose duty it is not to suffer 
such interference, would have been the very persons to 
proclaim the betrayal of their trust and their base ser- 
vility ? And by whom else could the fact be promul- 
gated ? 

We have seen it superficially remarked that, Prince 
Albert being a Privy Councillor, the Queen may consti- 
tutionally take his advice on affairs of State. But, if Her 
Majesty did so, the Minister responsible, to whose counsels 
Her Majesty preferred the Prince Consort's, should make 
his bow and retire. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli are 
Privy Councillors, and the Queen has the undoubted right 
of recourse to their advice if Her Majesty thinks fit ; but 



246 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

upon such a step Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone 
would resign. Suspicion, then, of undue interference can 
only mount up to Prince Albert upon the preliminary 
conviction that Her Majesty's Ministers have betrayed 
their trust. If there has 'been any wrong practice, it is 
they who have to answer for suffering it, and upon them 
should first fall the storm of indignation. Blame cannot 
justly touch Prince Albert till the Ministry be convicted 
of having failed to protect and assert their constitutional 
rights. And this brings us to a fair question of credibility. 
Is it to be believed that such men as compose the present 
Cabinet would be so servile, so abject, as to submit to 
the interferences with their functions which are alleged 
to have been of habitual practice ? 

In order to begin thinking ill of the Prince Consort, 
how much worse must we think of all Her Majesty's 
responsible advisers, severally and collectively? 

Let people whose minds are inflamed by the idea of 
foreign interference ask themselves fairly why they should 
suppose such men as Lord Lansdowne, Lord John Eussell, 
Lord Palmerston, Lord Clarendon, Sir James Graham, 
Lord Granville, the Duke of Newcastle, destitute of the 
British feeling, British spirit, and we will say British 
jealousy, which are so powerfully stirred in their own 
breasts by a mere rumour. If the idea is so offensive to 
•John Bull, let him think what the fact would have been to 
Ministers degraded personally by the meddling with their 
duties which also violates constitutional rule. 

Wc respect the British jealousy of foreign interference; 
nay, we share in it strongly : but let us beware that no Iago 
practises on tins passion for mixed motives of selfishness 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 247 

and malignity. And we cannot but be struck by the 
fact that the bitterest attacks on the Prince Consort, for 
alleged sympathies with despotic powers and policy, pro- 
ceed from the old champions of despotism ; from the inve- 
terate foes of liberty in every province of politics and in 
every part of the world. When we see the assaults on the 
character of the Prince from these quarters, they make 
us think, to account for them, of the good we know of 
His Royal Highness, and not of the evil that may be 
imagined. They make us dwell on what he has clone 
for social improvement, for humanity, for arts, for the 
comfort of industry, and upon his enlightened liberal views 
— liberal not in the narrow party meaning of the word, but 
in its large original sense. — (1854.) 

LORD ELLENBOROUGH. 

A young Pickle dropped his drumstick into a well. 
He had a shrewd suspicion that people would not be 
prevailed on to go down into a well to recover a drum- 
stick, so he laid hold of all the plate he could find and 
threw it after the drumstick into the well. The alarm 
was raised that the plate was missing ; the police were 
sent for ; little master rushed in with the news that there 
was something shining at the bottom of the well. The 
salvers, spoons, tureens, &c., were clearly seen where 
young Pickle had thrown them ; ladders were. got, and the 
plate was all fished up ; and, as the last ladle was recovered, 
little master called to the servant at the bottom of the 
well, ' John, as you are down there, you may as well 
bring up my drumstick.' 

The gates of Somnauth would seem to be Lord Ellen- 



248 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

borough's drumstick. Dost Mahomrned would appear 
to have been expelled, Shah Soojah set up, thousands of 
lives thrown away, terrible disasters suffered, and as ter- 
rible retaliation inflicted, for no other end than the re- 
covery and restoration of the gates of Juggurnath's temple. 
Or, if this were not the express object of the Affghan war, 
it would appear that the accomplishment of such an exploit 
surpassed in importance any other object that had been con- 
templated, and that the feat incidental to the ostensible 
design incomparably transcended it in consequence, and 
amply atoned for the miscarriage of it with all the losses 
and reverses. We have lavished a vast deal of blood 
and treasure in pursuance of a policy which Lord Ellen- 
borough has reprobated ; but, to make' amends, or more 
than amends, we have got back, for a filthy, obscene idol, 
its long-lost gates. 

Eeally, seeing what we see, it seems to us that the best 
use that could have been made of the gates would have 
been to have shut up Lord Ellenborough within them, for 
the restraint which Hamlet recommends for Polonius. 

There has been one point in which Lord Ellenborough 
has been thought to have conceited himself a Samson ; 
and, not satisfied with the charm that lies in his hair, has 
lie intended to complete the resemblance by carrying off 
the gates of the city ? If so, what is to come next ? 

The whole tiling looks like a burlesque. — (1843.) 



The ' Allgcmeine Zeitung' gives the following account of 
the much-favoured idol that has been the only gainer by 
the Affghan war : — 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 249 

' Patan Somnauth must not, as has been done by some 
of the English papers, be confounded with the temple of 
Juggurnath, which is situated at the opposite side of 
India. 

' The city of Patan (the Chosen One), so called, accord- 
ing to Abul Pasel, on account of its beautiful site, received 
its surname of Somnauth (more properly Svayambu Naut, 
or the Self-Created God) on account of a famous statue of 
Siva, venerated as one of the holiest idols of all India. 
This statue used to be bathed twice a day in the holy 
water of the Gauges, brought expressly for that purpose 
to the temple. Two thousand Brahmins were attached 
to the service of the temple, and, to charm the leisure of 
these reverend gentlemen, 500 bayaderes and 300 
musicians were likewise devoted to the service of the idol. 
Three hundred barbers derived their income from the piety 
of the visitors, for every true believer who went to perform 
his devotions in the interior of the sacred edifice was 
obliged to submit to the ceremony of shaving.' 

We have copied this information chiefly for the last 
fact, which will serve to reassure and comfort those who 
have been troubled with fears that Lord Ellenborough 
was about to turn idolater. No one who has ever seen 
Lord Ellenborough can believe him a convert to an idolatry 
that requires the sacrifice of a head of hair. Between 
him and the worship that supports three hundred barbers 
there lies a sea of Macassar Oil, an ocean of Curling 
Fluid. There is not a man in the world so clear of any 
cult employing the barber as the Proclaimer-General. 
The three hundred barbers of Siva could be potted in 
Lord Ellenborough's bear's grease. He wears as much 



250 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

hair as the three hundred barbers of Siva ever cut oft. 
He is the personified antithesis of the idolatry delighting 
in cropped or bald heads. It may be asked how he 
came to honour the Hindoo god of hair-cutting ; and the 
answer is, because he, of all men living, felt that he 
might do so without any suspicion of a propensity to 
become one of his cropped votaries. It may be, too, that 
what has been taken for the tribute • of respect was, in 
fact, defiance, and that Lord Ellenborough sent the hair- 
cutting divinity his gates to indicate that it was time for 
him to shut up shop ; the example of the full beauties of 
a head of hair being before the people of Hindostan in 
the admired person of their Governor-General. 

It is indeed reported that the priests of Siva, in conformity 
with the Eastern practice of making a return for presents, 
intend to send Lord Ellenborough the pair of scissors 
which he has lacked the use of for the last forty years ; 
and that the three hundred barbers are to make the pro- 
cession to present them. It will be a fine sight to see 
them in the face of each other, the three hundred cutters 
and the Great Uncut. 

How perfect the adjustment of supply and demand. — 
(1843.) 



Mr. Vernon Smith having touched on the subject of 
Lord Ellenborough's proceedings as to the gates of Som- 
nauthj in a very clever speech on a Motion for Papers, 
Mr. Bingham Baring entered into a defence of the 
Governor-General ; in which lie laboured with more zeal 
than success, and with less scruples than either, to prove 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 251 

that the conduct of Lord Elleuborough had been in every 
respect in question faultless. 

Sir Eobert Peel made a speech one-half the one way, 
one-half the other. The first half was devoted to the 
defence of Lord Ellenborough, the latter half to a con- 
fession of misconduct on his part. 

Sir Eobert has proceeded in the vindication of his 
Governor-General precisely as Gay recommends people 
to treat a cucumber, that is, first to dress it with great 
care, and, when that is done, to throw it away. 

In the outset Sir Eobert Peel denied the charge of 
impiety and favouring idolatry ; and in candour we must 
admit that he did succeed in showing that the Governor- 
General had held an even hand between idolatry and 
Christianity ; that, as the homely proverb expresses it, he 
did not make fish of one and flesh of the other. 

Sir Eobert pleaded, as a set-off against the proclama- 
tion about the honours to the furniture of idolatry, the 
circular to the clergy — 

' Entreating them to offer up in their churches, at such 
convenient time as they might appoint, their humble 
thanksgiving to Almighty God, to whose paternal good- 
ness and mercy the restoration of the blessing of peace 
alone was attributable.' 

It is very fortunate that the Governor-General, in that 
circular to the clergy, did not desire thanks to be given 
for the restoration of the gates of the idol, as well as for 
the blessing of peace, especially as in his proclamation 
he had treated the recovery of those gates as worth the 
price of a war, inasmuch as it was boastfully declared 
the main object and result of it. 



252 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

If, as Sir Eobert Peel would have us, we are to com- 
pare the proclamation and the circular ; the compliment 
to idolatry and the homage to Christianity ; we must con- 
fess that there appears much more unction in the former. 

But Sir Eobert asserts that the gates were to be con- 
sidered as a military trophy only, and not as any religious 
symbol. Why, a tiling is only a trophy with relation to 
what have been its uses. A pair of gates carried off from 
a temple could only be a trophy as the sign of the triumph 
over, and insult to, a hated creed. The restoration 
turns the triumph and insult the other way, with the 
addition of the barbarism of the desecration of a tomb. 

If the Duke of Wellington had sent the mitre of the 
Primate of France to England, it could not have been 
accepted as a trophy, except as a sign of insult to the 
Catholic Church. 

Both Mr. Bingham Baring and Sir Eobert Peel have 
contended that the Mahometans of India will not feel 
affronted by the desecration of Mahmoud's tomb, as 
they delight in the humiliation of their old enemies and 
vanquishers, the Affghans. 

It might as well be argued that any outrageous insult 
to the Catholic religion, when our army was in France, 
could not have been unacceptable to the Irish soldiery in 
Her Majesty's service, because they fought the French 
with as hearty good-will as their Protestant brethren. But 
what would have been the feelings of the British Catholics 
if any utensil or vessel devoted to the uses of the Catholic 
worship had been made a trophy and paraded as a 
trophy? They would not have seen in it a trophy, in the 
glory of which they had an equal share. They would have 



POLITICAL STRICTURES, 253 

seen in it only a wanton and barbarous insult to their 
religion, and would have felt that their share in the trophy 
was only that of disgrace and humiliation. If, then, a 
trophy can only be such with relation to what have been 
its uses, whence it has derived its sacredness, value or 
importance, it matters not, as far as the question of senti- 
ment is concerned, whether it has changed masters for the 
first time or not ; and in its restoration it carries with it 
all the offence to religion on the one side that it did in its 
original capture to the other. 

After Sir Eobert Peel had disputed the justice of the 
censures passed on his Governor-General, after he had 
laboured to show that none of the objections alleged 
applied to his conduct, after he had soaped and rubbed 
and scrubbed his blackamoor, and taken all pains to 
make him as white as an angel, out comes the admission 
with respect to the proclamation — 

4 He must say, however, with reference to it, that he 
could not hold one language in that House with regard 
to it, and another language out of doors. He at once 
admitted that it had attracted the attention of the 
Government, and it had been thought necessary to make 
such representations to India with respect to it as were 
thought necessary. He could not write to the Governor- 
General of India on this subject, and at once publish his 
opinion, if it carried a free expression of opinion with 
reference to this subject as a matter of religious dissen- 
sion, without being aware that it must be attended with 
very great danger. Indeed, he might add that in this 
point of view it was a subject almost too delicate to allude 
to as a matter of discussion.' 



254 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

A subject too delicate, indeed. Too indelicate he means, 
— the gates of Somnauth having been the gates of the 
temple of the filthiest obscenity that ever polluted the 
earth. They had five hundred wives of flesh and blood, 
being in fact the portals of the priests' harem. They are 
now in a widowed state : but Lord Ellenborough was not 
aware of that misfortune. 

But, seriously, if Sir Eobert Peel saw reason to blame 
the proclamation in his despatches to the author, why 
does he now defend it against every objection raised 
against it ? What palpable dishonesty is this ! And, after 
such an example, what is there which these Tory Minis- 
ters will not defend in their places in Parliament, even 
though they may have censured it in their private com- 
munications from their official chambers ? 

After all, says Sir Eobert, you are blaming one act 
of the Governor-General ; a remark which provokes the 
retort of Talleyrand to the same defence : but when is 
this one act to have an end ? It is a piece in one act — 
burlesques are never in more than one act — an extrava- 
ganza, like ' Tom Thumb ' or ' Bombastes Furioso ' ; but 
the one act is intolerably long, and the public begin to 
cry, Off, off ; manager, manager ; an apology, an apology. 

Certainly, when Lord Ellenborough sees the turn of 
Sir Eobert Peel's vindication of him, provoking, nay 
challenging, inquiry into his doings beyond the Somnauth 
proclamation, lie must say, with the character in the 
'School for Scandal,' that lie feels lost indeed when 
Candour undertakes 1 1 is defence. 

We have defended a part, an important part, of Lord 
Ellenb< dough's Administration, the evacuation of AfTghan- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 255 

stan (not the barbarities attending it) ; we had and we 
have no disposition to take an unfavourable view of his 
government : but his enormous and dangerous follies have 
made the only passage in his policy which we approved, 
(questionable as that was in manner and spirit, though 
right in the main,) appear now but as a lucid interval in a 
career of madness. 

The folly is contagious, and has given rise to the 
greatest puerility that the House of Commons has perhaps 
ever been the scene of, manifold and numerous as its 
absurdities have been ; the grave controversy about the 
character of Sultan Mahmoud, who has rested in his 
tomb for eight centuries ! 

In order to defend Lord Ellenbrough, Sir Eobert Peel 
said some very severe things on the doings of this man of 
yesterday, Sultan Mahmoud of the eleventh century, the 
worst of which was that the wealth of India had tempted 
him to invade it. Our possession of the country is of 
course referable to a very different motive. Lord Ellen- 
borough shows that we went there only to protect and 
honour its idolatries. — (1843.) 



What is the restoration of the gates without the resto- 
ration of the temple to which to hang them ? How 
worthy of a people's love is a Government which gives 
them a door and refuses the building which it claimed 
gratitude for refurnishing ! What greater insult to the 
deity of the Hindoos than to present him with a door 
when he is without a house ; to offer Siva board when 
he wants lodging? 



25G rOLITICAL STRICTURES. 

Everyone knows the old glee — 

Glorious Apollo from on high beheld us, 

Wand'ring to find a temple for his praise ; 
He Polyhymnia hither sent to guard us, &c. 

The Hindoos have been made to feel precisely this 
sentiment by the Governor-General's proclamation. Siva 
is their Apollo, and Ellenborongh their Polyhymnia, whose 
productions the great Duke therefore appropriately calls 
6 the song of triumph.' 

But, when the breach of promise of temple becomes 
known to them, how bitter will be their disappointment. 
It is like a present of a comb to a bald man, a knee- 
buckle to a Highlander, a set of sympathetic dinner-tables 
to a man without a house or a sixpence to get a dinner. 

When a profligate nobleman was charged by his wife 
with allowing five hundred a-year to an actress, he replied 

with vivacity, 'Well, if I do allow 6001. a-year, 

I suppose I don't pay her.' Lord Ellenborough may make 
the same defence to the reproach of promising to restore 
the gates to the restored temple of Somnauth. If he does 
promise it, he supposes that he cannot perform it. 

After all, then, the Mahometans may not have so much 
reason for umbrage, and may have the laugh on their 
side, seeing the barren, impertinent tribute which, with 
so much ado, has been rendered to the Hindoos, as if 
only to make them feel the decay of their religion under 
British auspices. We have great satisfaction in pointing 
out this effect, as we are fond of defending Lord Ellen- 
borough. Ee has the art of pleasing and displeasing, in 
turns, both parts of the population. He does honour to 
the Temple of Somnauth ; and the Hindoos are elate and 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 257 

the Mahometans are cast down : but lo ! there is no temple, 
and there is to be no temple, and the unattached and un- 
attachable gates are mere lumber, and, what is worse, 
desecrated by their uses at Mahmoud's tomb ; and the 
Hindoos are disappointed and mortified, and the Maho- 
metans scoff. So blunder balances blunder. 

But what is to be done with the gates ? By analogy 
their destination should be clear. They are the relicts, 
the widows of the departed Temple of Somnauth, and 
should be consumed in a suttee, the funeral pile being 
lighted with Lord Ellenborough's proclamation. The 
thing would then end as it began — in smoke. — (1843.) 



We find ourselves in a predicament. After having 
written a most satisfactory article of explanation and 
justification, we have to tack a petard of a postscript to it 
blowing all our statements to atoms. 

The last news from India informs us that the temple of 
Siva no longer exists, that there are no Brahmins, no 
bayaderes, no musicians, and no three hundred barbers. 
But, after all, what difference does that make ? If the 
Proclaimer-General thought that the idol, the temple, the 
Brahmins, the bayaderes, and the three hundred barbers 
did exist, his motives were the same whether they existed 
or not, and our demonstration that they did not incline 
him to worship at a hair-cutting shrine remains good. 

But what is the Proclaimer-General to do now ? He 
is in the perplexity to which the favourite American 
phrase applies — he cannot ' fix ' the gates ' anyhow.' He 
can much more easily unhinge all India. The gates are 



2S8 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

without a temple, without an idol, without priests, with- 
out bayaderes, without the three hundred barbers. The 
Proclaimer-General has thus brought both Mahmoud 
and Siva to most ridiculous straits, the tomb of the one 
looking like an open-mouthed fool for want of gates, and 
the other having a pair of gates on his hands, but no 
temple to put them to. As the Cherubim, when he was 
invited to take a seat, modestly excused himself, saying 
that he had not the wherewith, so Siva, to the proffer of 
his gates, must reply that he has not the wherewith for 
the hanging of them. And to make the thing complete 
in its way, everything being wanting, the sandal-wood 
gates have no sandal in them, — nothing but scandal, and 
plenty of that. 

One of the Indian papers says — 

' Whither are the gates to be conducted ? The temple 
of Somnauth is in ruins. The little that remains of it has 
been converted into a Mahomedan mosque. Not only 
has the remembrance of the temple been utterly lost, but 
the temple itself has ceased to exist as a Hindoo sanc- 
tuary, and there is literally no building at Somnauth to 
which the gates can be affixed, excepting a Mahomedan 
mosque. When the gates have been transmitted with all 
honour through Sirhind, and Eajwarra, and Malwa, and 
Guzerat, to what establishment of priests is the sacred 
deposit to be given? There is not a Hindoo Brahmin 
there to welcome them back. The whole population of 
the town is Mahomedan. The proclamation speaks of 
a " restored temple." Who is to restore it? Is it in- 
tended that the British Government shall be at the 
expense of turning a Mahomedan shrine into an idol- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 259 

. — __ _ , — , 

atrous temple, in order that it may serve as a monument 
of its victories in Affghanistan ? Will the Governor- 
General procure afresh idol, and set the Brahmins to re- 
consecrate the defiled gates ? ' 

It is to be observed that the Proclaimer-General states 
that the gates will be transmitted to ' the restored temple 
of Somnauth,' so that he must have contemplated the re- 
storation of the shrine for the obscenest idolatry. 

Another Indian paper says — 

6 Lord Ellenborough knew, or ought to have known, 
that the temple of Somnauth was dedicated to Siva, and 
the odious Lingum worship in its most detestable impuri- 
ties ; he knew it to be a complete ruin, and his order, if 
it mean anything, appears to mean the restoration of the 
temple and shrine under the most publicly announced 
approbation and patronage of the Governor-General, and, 
of course, we presume, at the expense of the British 
Government.' 

From the defence of the Proclaimer-General, which 
that devout nobleman, Lord Stanley, has already made, 
we feel far from certain that the worst fears of our friends 
in India will not be realised. We are not without the 
most dismal apprehensions that in the votes for the ser- 
vices of the year the grant to Maynooth will be followed 
by one to Somnauth. — (1843.) 



Ax elderly gentleman with the military mania is as un- 
pitiable a case as one of the same years in the measles, 
the hooping cough, the chicken pox, or the kindred 



260 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

scarlatina. ' He will never get over it,' people cry ; ' why 
did he not have it sooner ? ' 

The military mania certainly ought to be taken early. 
Boys get over it in a couple of years or so : but, when it 
seizes on a gentleman past fifty, it fastens obstinately on 
his constitution, and the chances are that he will carry 
it with him to the grave. 

Major Sturgeon is an eminent example in point. The 
Major did not begin his exercise till forty, and at fifty, 
as we all know, he did not care a flea-bite for the noise 
of the guns, and was never happy but when smelling 
powder. Lord Ellenborough's is a case of the same kind. 
He took to soldiering at a more advanced age than the 
Major, and all his pleasure now is in an army. Camps 
and cantonments he speaks of with the enthusiasm of 
the Major, who would however not have omitted the 
canteen to complete the alliteration. 

What will become of him when he comes home? 
His friends are not without their fears that he will 'list. 

In taking his leave of India, it will be seen he de- 
clared that all his sorrow was in parting with the Army. 
Major Sturgeon would have said precisely the same on 
quitting Brentford, the scene of so many brilliant achieve- 
ments. 

Feeling himself all a soldier, as the Sturgeon family 

always do, Lord Ellcnborough became exceedingly pro- 

ional in his views of the means of retaining the Indian 

Empire, and protested there was ' nothing like leather ' for 

the purpose. 

He generously assured the brave companions of his 
toils that they might be satisfied with his successor, 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 261 

because lie was even a better soldier than himself, and 
above all, because the Duke of Wellington had recom- 
mended him, and he would have the advice and support 
of the great Captain. As Lord Ellenborough himself 
had the same guarantees of excellence in the Duke's 
favour, his impartial estimate of them in his successor is 
no very roundabout way of attesting his own worth. 

The Civil Service and the Government are treated with 
equal contempt by the soldier untived. His hatred for 
the first is intimated in his declaration that all his regret 
is at quitting the Army ; and as for the second, he says 
that his successor is to be confided in, not because of the 
wisdom of the power appointing him, but because the 
Duke of Wellington, who has no authority in the matter, 
advised or approved the nomination ! 

This is what the Scotch call the ' Claw me and I'll 
claw you' system. The Duke vouches for his Ellen- 
borough, and his Ellenborough vouches for the infalli- 
bility of his Duke.— (1844.) 

LOKD GOUGH. 

A very dull Member of Parliament, having stammered 
through a marvellously stupid speech, was heard, as he 
reseated himself, to ejaculate, ' Non nobis , Domine, non 
nobis, seel tuo nomini gloria eletur? Committing the same 
sort of mistake, Lord Gough commences an account of 
his most unsatisfactory operations with an assignment of 
their mighty success to the special pleasure of Providence. 
Non nobis, non nobis, ' it has pleased Almighty God to 
vouchsafe to the British arms the most successful issue to 
the extensive combinations rendered necessary for the 






262 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

purpose of effecting the passage of the Chenab, the defeat 
and dispersion of the Sikh force under the insurgent 
Eajah Shere Singh, and the numerous Sikh Sirdars who 
had the temerity to set at defiance the British power.' 

So solemn and devout an exordium as this, borrowed 
from Nelson, prepared the public for a victory as decisive as 
the one which the naval hero so eloquently attributed to the 
blessing of Providence ; but sad indeed is the discrepancy 
between the swelling introduction and the upshot of the 
intelligence, which is simply that the enemy has got away 
unscathed, after mauling our troops grievously in a 
skirmish, and that the General has crossed the Chenab ! 
So, in Scott's 'Old Mortality,' Mawse Headrigg ex- 
claims, ' By the help of the Lord I've leapt over the 
ditch.' 

Hierocles tells us of a wiseacre who, seeing a flock of 
birds on a tree, shook the tree, thinking that they would 
fall down like fruit, and was mightily amazed when he 
saw them soar away upwards. Lord Gough's diversion 
by General Thackwell was shaking the tree with a like 
success. — (1849.) 



' I came, I saw, I conquered,' was the boast of Caesar. I 
came, I did not see, I did not conquer, should have been 
the bulletin of Lord Gough. He came; he made no 
reconnaissance, he shut his eyes, he put down his head, 
he rushed at the enemy like a mad bull. 

A runaway corps was addressed by a great captain 
thus : c Gentlemen, you are mistaken ; the enemy is 
behind, not before yon.' The same mistake may not 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 2G3 

unnaturally have been committed by General Pope's 
brigade, for the General whom they had far more reason 
to fear than Sheer Singh was their own Commander-in- 
Chief.— (1849.) 

THE VIRTUES OF A NAME. 

The Marquis of Tweeddale is charged with having un- 
justly deprived some Sepoy troops of certain allowances ; 
that, mutiny having followed, he yielded the point in dis- 
pute, and the regiment returned to its duty, and did 
duty ; but nevertheless that, nine months afterwards, the 
principal ringleaders were put on their trial by court- 
martial, thirteen sentenced to banishment for life, and two 
shot. 

Now such an accusation as this in Parliament is only a 
text for the praise of the Marquis of Tweeddale. 

The Marquis of Tweeddale, says Sir John Hobhouse, 
is too much of a gallant soldier to be chargeable with 
cruelty, and too much of an honest man to shift from 
himself responsibility fairly belonging to him. 

The Marquis of Tweeddale, quoth Sir Kobert Peel, 
from all he had seen, heard, or known of the Marquis of 
Tweeddale during a long and distinguished career under 
the Duke of Wellington, had inspired him with a strong 
conviction that the noble lord would be the last man who 
would have been guilty of oppression, or chargeable with 
an excess of military discipline. His tendencies were 
tendencies of kindness towards the soldier. Briefer, and 
to precisely the same purpose, it would be simply to 
affirm that the Marquis of Tweeddale is the Marquis of 
Tweeddale, and there is an answer thorough and complete 



i 



204 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

to any charge. Nothing is to be believed against the 
Marquis of Tweecldale ; the Marquis of Tweeddale from 
the Tweeddale nature is to be presumed impeccable. 

The accused in all cases of this sort before Parliament 
is not only entitled to the presumption of innocence, but 
to the attribution of every virtue under the sun. The 
accuser, on the other hand, is always actuated by some 
undue and malignant motive. He would never have 
preferred the charge but for a quarrel ; and this circum- 
stance of course makes the truth or falsehood of the 
charge a matter of indifference to public feeling and the 
ends of justice. 

It has been settled over and over again that time cures 
injustice. If the thing passed some four or five years 
ago, there is no need of words about it. There is a 
short statute of limitations to the humanities. The answer 
to any question about the matter is, why has the thing 
slumbered so long, and why is it mooted now? It is 
always too late or too early. But what time can there 
be for inquiring into the conduct of a Marquis of Tweed- 
dale, who, being Marquis of Tweeddale, is incapable of 
anything wrong, and a pattern of all the virtues ? Sir 
John Hobhouse departed from the true and established 
parliamentary line of vindication when he referred to the 
time that has elapsed without demand for inquiry, in- 
stead of resting his case solely on the decisive grounds 
of the impossibility of fault or error in the Marquis of 
Tweeddale. The Marquis of Tweeddale can do no wrong. 
What more needs be said? The Marquis of Tweeddale 
is great, and Sir John Hobhouse is his prophet! Bis- 
millah ! 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 265 

When we examine the account of the Marquis of 
Tweeddale's conduct, we find it in remarkable conformity 
with the greatest examples. Homer tells us that kings 
lay up their anger in their breasts, and wait their conve- 
nient opportunities of venting it. So, it seems, did the 
Marquis of Tweeddale. He rescinded his order stopping 
allowances, and the mutiny he had provoked was at an 
end, and the men returned to their duty, imagining, no 
doubt, that all was overlooked ; little suspecting the 
kingly mind with which they had to do, big with vengeance 
biding its time. It is singular that Sir Eobert Peel, in 
viewing the various evidences of justice and mercy in the 
proceedings of the Marquis of Tweeddale, overlooked this 
point of conformity with the usages of the greatest in the 
husbandry of wrath. 

But Sir Eobert, to make up for that omission, extracts 
a grace from the delay of trial, and sees in it the strongest 
presumption for the temper and deliberateness of the 
proceedings, clear of all heat and precipitation. So 
Polyphemus put men by for a time, and beat their brains 
out at the suitable season without any passion, showing 
thereby that there could be no species of injustice in his 
doings. 

But, again, we must ask, why reason the matter ? why 
resort to inferences to show that the Marquis of Tweed- 
dale has not been in fault, when you have commenced 
with the conclusion that the Marquis of Tweeddale is 
incapable of wrong ? 

And after all, as Sir Eobert says, only two were shot, 
only two ! Think of that, good people ; only two shot 
and a baker's dozen banished for life. What moderation ! 



2G6 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

What clemency ! And the two who were so mercifully 
shot had been allowed to enjoy nine months of life un- 
troubled with the fear of death, or even the expectation 
of punishment, owing to the deliberate, cool method in 
which this matchless Marquis of Tweeddale takes his 
measures for attaining the ends of justice by a handsome 
circuit. And mark the public economy of this mode of 
proceeding. Duty for nine months was exacted and had 
from the men, before bullets were despatched through 
their brains. Had they been shot forthwith, this advan- 
tage would have been lost, making the most of the cul- 
prits, and taking the most out of them before taking life 
away from them. So, in France, they work their oxen to 
the last before they kill them for beef. A common 
objection to capital punishment is that the worst thing 
you can make of a man is a corpse ; but the expedient 
of taking nine months' duty out of him before despatching 
him, pro tanto, diminishes that objection. 

During the whole of the discussion of this matter, not 
a word was said of the order which occasioned the mutiny, 
and which is alleged, without contradiction, to have been 
unjust, and withdrawn as indefensible, after the worst 
consequences had been produced by it. 

Now, if there are any human minds so constituted as to 
conceive it possible that the Marquis of Tweeddale can 
be capable of error, they may be very likely to contend 
that the question, whether the proceeding that produced 
mutiny was just or not, has a very important bearing on 
the question whether the extreme rigour of punishment 
for mutiny, provoked by unfair treatment, was warrant- 
able or not. And they may ask, supposing the Marquis 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 267 

of Tweedclale to have been in fault in the first instance, 
how he could reconcile it to his conscience to inflict the 
extreme penalty on men whose crime had been the direct 
fruit of his own wrong. But in this hypothesis we are 
breaking in upon the foregone conclusion upon which 
Sir Eobert Peel and Sir John Hobhouse so firmly and 
inexpugnably take their stand, that the Marquis of 
Tweeddale can do no wrong, and that his name is a deci- 
sive answer to all impeachment. — (1849.) 

THE VALUE OF INDIA DIRECTORS. 

The dilemma in which the casuists placed the character 
of Lucretia applies to the East Indian Directory : Si casta, 
quare trucidata ; si 11011 casta, quare laudata ? If it has 
worked L so w r ell, why meddle with it ? why not let well 
alone ? why innovate, for the mere sake of innovation ? 

Our representative system is confessed faulty, and next 
year is appointed for its reformation. But the constitu- 
tion of this East Indian Directory is to be judged by its 
fruits, which are pronounced such as no other tree of 
government in the world has borne. Nevertheless, we 
have a self-condemned Parliament sitting in judgment 
on this paragon, and entertaining proposals of change. 
Would it not be more sensible to make it our own, if it 
be what it is represented, like the young man who, when 
his mother desired him to look out for a governess with 
every accomplishment and merit under the sun, replied : 
* When I have the good fortune to find such an one I 
will make her, not your servant, but my wife ' ? 

If the votes of a few scores of old ladies and gentle- 
men holding India stock are of a virtue to produce a 



268 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

Directory capable of the wisest government over 150 
millions of people, without any special qualifications in 
such directors, without any peculiar knowledge or ap- 
titude, why should we cleave to our town and county 
constituencies, which are found so fallible, or so corrupt 
in their choices ? If the Court of Directors has done so 
much better, on the whole, than the Imperial Parliament, 
why not transfer to the former the small addition of the 
management of the United Kingdom with its depen- 
dencies ? Thirty millions would not be much of an 
addition to the subjects under the administration of the 
Company ; and what is managed so well at a distance 
ought, a fortiori, to be done still better at home, or near 
at hand. 

When Canning defended the old Boroughmongery on 
precisely the same ground that the double Government of 
India has been defended, namely, that it had worked well 
and produced certain great men. he consistently resisted 
change, declining the lottery of legislation. But now, 
with greater vouchers for the perfection of the Indian 
Government, innovation is proposed without any principle 
of reformation. If faults, such as want of local know- 
ledge and experience, had been confessed, and traced to 
the ignorance of the Directory, the proposal to diminish 
the amount of such ignorance would be intelligible, how- 
ever insufficient for the object ; reminding us, as it 
indeed does in that respect, of Horace Walpole's anecdote 
of the Gunpowder Plot. The Lord Chamberlain was sent 
to examine the vaults under the Parliament House, and, 
returning with his report, said lie had found four-and- 
twenty barrels of gunpowder, that he had removed six 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 2G9 

of them, and hoped the other eighteen would do no 
harm. 

But in removing half a dozen of the ignorant directors, 
like the six barrels of gunpowder, how do we know that 
harm may not be done ? If ignorance has hitherto con- 
sisted with so excellent an administration, how do we 
know that it is not necessary and essential to the effect ? 
Certain it is that it is either a good or a bad element. If 
the one, why diminish it ? If the other, why retain so 
large a preponderance of it, nay, or any particle of it ? 

A POLITICAL PARTY MISSING. 

A paragraph lately went the round of the journals 
headed 'A Kussian Army Missing,' — a strange piece of 
news : but our domestic intelligence contains one, just as 
curious, namely, that the great Conservative party is in 
the same predicament, missing like the Muscovite host, 
and a subject of a thousand anxious inquiries and specu- 
lations. In truth, however, the party was always so much 
in the habit of going astray that we cannot but wonder at 
the degree of surprise attached just now to an occurrence 
so usual. It is certainly not for us to propose or under- 
take a voyage of discovery after the lost Conservatives, 
who it seems are not able to conserve even themselves. We 
are neither their brethren nor their keepers ; but at the 
same time we shall be glad to hear of their safety, for 
there is room enough in the world of politics for us all, 
and there is nothing in creation without its uses, — not 
even a Spooner. 

As to the whereabouts of the party at the present 
moment we have a shrewd suspicion of our own. Our 



270 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

notion is, they are at sea. They want a policy, and they 
are at sea to find one ; but as they have little or nothing 
in the way of character, weight, or principle to trade on, 
their chance of bringing home a fair cargo is exceedingly 
slender. If their venture prove good, it will be a con- 
firmation of what the witty clown says to Duke Orsino, — 
6 1 would have men of such "constancy put to sea, that 
their business might be everything, and their intents 
everywhere, for that's it that always makes a good voyage 
of nothing.' 

If not at sea, we really cannot conjecture where the 
Conservatives can possibly be. At this season we were 
wont to hear their voices in the counties, at least in the 
agricultural shires ; but now there is not so much as a 
Tory mouse stirring, even in Bucks. The Irish bogs have 
no account to give of them. Even Enniskillen is mute. 
Had they been lost in a Scotch mist, with Sir Archibald 
Alison, some of the thousand sportsmen in the moors 
would have heard their crow, or seen something of them. 
One thing is very certain, that a brace of Conservatives 
now would be quite in season, and bring a handsome 
price, were it only for stuffing and placing in a museum. 

It sounds odd to hear journals calling themselves Con- 
servative disputing about the existence of a Conservative 
party, and, actually denying the existence of a policy 
bearing the name. If there is no policy there can be no 
party, and, if there be no party, how come there to be 
newspapers professing to represent it ? Conservatism is, 
in fact, extinct everywhere just now, as much in the Press 
as it is in Parliament. A Conservative press would create 
a Conservative party, if there were a Conservative policy 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 271 

to uphold. The principles are not forthcoming. There 
is nothing to be done in the way of Conservatism, for 
nothing is attacked from any quarter that any man of the 
least respectability will undertake to defend. The real 
truth is that the war with public abuses is carried on 
much too gently to require a standing army of politicians 
for their protection ; and the party in office must be 
much more liberal and energetic than it is at present, 
before we shall see an opposition reorganised to support 
things as they are, under any of the old party names and 
pretexts. 

An honest Conservative would easily console himself 
for the prostration of his cause in Parliament. So far 
from discovering, in its decline and fall, a rampant 
Liberalism, threatening the institutions of the country, he 
would only discern a satisfactory proof that Eeformers 
are not very busy. Such a man would find comfort in 
reflecting that Conservatism itself could scarcely be less 
of a disturber than the Liberalism now ascendant ; and 
why then should he covet office, seeing that its present 
possessors are practically as much Conservative as himself? 

It is rather for us to regret the state of things which by 
doing so little in the line of public improvement has com- 
pletely destroyed the occupation of those whose function 
in the State was either to prevent amelioration altogether, 
or to reduce the amount of it as low as possible. We 
confess we should like to see Liberalism in that active 
state which would be more sure to call some modification 
or other of Toryism into life and activity also. We dis- 
like the torpor of opposition resulting in no small degree 
from the want of energy in office. The missing party, no 



272 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

matter how far they may now be at sea, would soon 
appear again in the offing, if there were good reason to 
believe that the spirit of progress was about to animate 
the Government. We would recall the Conservatives by 
giving them something to do in the way of resisting or 
minimising reformation. We would give them a policy 
again by returning to the policy of useful change that 
originally gave them a political existence. Their presence, 
even in the most obstructive form of Toryism, is a healthier 
symptom than their absence, caused by the poverty of the 
element of useful change. — (1856.) 

MR. ROEBUCK'S LIVERPOOL SPEECH. 

' Give me footing out of the world, and I will move the 
world,' said Archimedes. In the world of politics Mr. 
Eoebuck is in the same predicament as Archimedes. Con- 
fined to the world, he cannot move the world. He can- 
not find a plant for his lever clear of corruption. There 
is rottenness everywhere. If an upright man enters on 
the stage of politics he does not maintain his rectitude 
long. He falls at the temptation of a card to the Queen's 
ball, and thenceforth crawls on his belly. Mr. Eoebuck 
finds himself amongst reptiles, and asks for honest up- 
right men. With a little band of the wise and incorrupt- 
ible he sees that wonders could be done, but how are 
they to be got ? or, harder still, being got, how are they to 
be secured ? how preserved ? how kept sweet and whole- 
some amidst the pervading corruption ? A man may be, 
as Hamlet phrases it, indifferent honest, but he has a wife 
who sighs for admission into the world that calls itself 
great, or he has a daughter who pines for the Queen's 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 273 

ball. A member of Parliament is beset with more temp- 
tations than St. Antony. He may be content to dine off 
cold shoulder of mutton, like Andrew Marvel ; he may 
be proof against place, against titles, against ribbons, but 
nevertheless may succumb to a Court card, relieving him 
from the female discontent that has so long troubled his 
peace. Such and many more of as mean a kind are the 
influences which Mr. Eoebuck describes as prevalent, 
and vitiating the representative system. And where is 
the cure, what the remedy ? It is easy to admonish con- 
stituencies to make better choices, but by what process 
are they to prove their candidates ? How are they to 
iind out beforehand whether a man's public virtue is 
stubborn enough to resist the temptation of a Minister's 
dinners, or the seduction of the Queen's balls, or any 
other of the baits that Mr. Eoebuck has particularised ? 
The fact is that Mr. Eoebuck proves too much. If matters 
were as he describes them, public virtue must be given 
up as an impossibility. When we hear Mr. Eoebuck's 
declarations of the state of things in which he is cast, 
we are irresistibly reminded of FalstafF's lamentations of 
the decline of valour which has left him alone in posses- 
sion of that quality. ' Go thy ways, old Jack, die when 
thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood be not forgotten 
upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. 
There live not three good men unhanged in England.' 
We do not mean to imply that Mr. Eoebuck is a pretender 
to what he does not possess, like Jack Falstaff, but he is 
a little fanfaron of his virtues. His estimate of himself 
is a lofty one, and he asks why other men cannot be as 
honest and true, as he is in his own conscientious judg- 

T 



274 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 



ment. Now, as we have before observed, if another J. 
A Eoebuck appeared on the political stage, his double in 
every respect, Mr. Eoebuck would not be satisfied with 
him, and would find something amiss either in his talents 
or his qualities. There is no brotherhood in politics for 
Mr. Eoebuck. He is in that field a very Cain. We 
acquit him of ill-feeling ; the error is one of judgment. 
His mind is exaggerative, and, raising a standard of merit 
above human capability, it condemns all who fall short 
of it. 

If a standard of excellence be raised preposterously 
high, the judgment upon all measured by it will be 
naught, and they will be rejected as pigmies and mis- 
shapen dwarfs. The world is never made better by tell- 
ing it it is bad. That lesson has been preached to it in 
all times without a jot diminishing the occasion. Dis- 
tinguishing the good that is in it is far more to the purpose 
than all confounding condemnations of the evil. Mrs. 
Stowe's Topsy is the type of a blackened world, always 
convinced of its wickedness, and never mending. 

Most unfortunate it is that, when Mr. Eoebuck holds 
forth on Eeform, he makes men despair in precise propor- 
tion to his carrying them with him in his sombre views. 
He shows, if he succeeds in showing anything at all, that 
there is a want which cannot be supplied by men, such 
as mortal men now are, as Homer expresses it in the 
language of disparagement, the most ancient and uni- 
versal in the world. 

Let it not be supposed that we underrate Mr. Eoebuck 
in combating his error of underrating his fellow-actors 
on the political stage. We value and honour Mr. Eoe- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 275 

buck highly for his brave specialty. Fear never con- 
trols his voice, nor any paltry deferences. He is the 
bravest of public champions, but far from an unerring 
public censor. The passion which serves him in opening 
a special impeachment leads him astray when he assumes 
judicial attributes. It is desirable that there should 
always be such a man in the House of Commons, and 
never has there been a better for the special service than 
Mr. Eoebuck, none more upright, more able, more 
courageous, none also, as the hackneyed essay has it, 
more 'original and unaccommodating. ' — (1857\) 

THE LOVES OF THE FINANCIERS. 

Mr. Gladstone is evidently weary of his political 
bachelor's life. He has been going a- wooing, like the 
frog in the ballad, and has found, we are happy to say, a 
helpmate perfectly to his fancy in the amiable and ac- 
complished Mademoiselle Disraeli, just returned from 
Paris, where she had been to give the last polish to her 
education. It was not good for Gladstone to be alone. 
We can imagine him addressing his new flame in a stanza 
of Shelley's : 

Nothing in this world is single ; 

All things by decree divine 
In each other's being mingle : 

"Why not I in thine ? 

Who is the conqueror now ? The political Arcadia is 
a country with ups and downs in it, as Mr. Gladstone at 
length experiences — vanquished in his turn, and kneeling 
and cooing where he before triumphed and crowed. 
Sentimentally speaking, we most admire the part the 
fair Disraeli plays in this romance of reality, the best 

T 2 



276 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

love-tale of the season. There is something so fine in re- 
taliating on a foe and a victor by the conquest of his 
affections. 

It is very pleasing also to find that money-matters (the 
well-known cause of the ancient difference) have been ar- 
ranged, as lawyers say, in the most satisfactory manner. 
Financial impediments no longer exist, those standing diffi- 
culties in the paths of lovers ; their notions of income and 
expenditure are critically the same ; and it is understood 
that mutual toleration removes all obstacles of a religious 
nature to a speedy and happy union. 

It is quite interesting to trace the petits soins of the 
adoring swain through the smitten Gladstone's speech or 
serenade of Tuesday. He sees something nice or just in 
all his Disraeli's statements, he touches and touches his 
pictures, waters his flowers, brings out his points, and 
delights to point out all the hidden or neglected beauties. 
Does his Dizzie make a vow ? Gladstone echoes it. Has 
his Dizzie a resolution that will not be Gladstone's also ? 
How tender and touching is all this. It makes one young 
again, and we feel as if violets and roses were springing 
under our feet in January. Dear Gladdie ! Dearest Dizzie ! 
— 6 Ma belle ! ' — c Ma mie ! ' But we understand it is 
covenanted between the parties, with pleasant reference to 
their old quarrel, that when he cries * Budget,' she is to 
cry, 'Mum!'— (1857.) 

lord John russell's services. 
We doubt if there will be found a more cheerful or 
prouder page in English domestic history than that which 
will record the numerous enlightened measures of which 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 277 

Lord John Eussell was either the prophet, the advocate, or 
the author. Where is the statesman who can point to any 
such list of victories in the cause of the people ? His 
life is part of the story of the nation's progress. His 
career is a line running parallel with the march of our 
freedom and civilisation ; or rather identical with it. His 
name is associated with all the political improvements of 
the last quarter of a century, No living Englishman, in 
short, has done so many great things, great in the sense 
of usefulness, the best sense of greatness. The metro- 
polis of England will pause ere it rejects such proved 
ability and sterling merit, soliciting its suffrages for no 
personal object of lucre or ambition, but only to be en- 
abled from the same vantage-ground to persevere in the 
same cause of enlightened patriotism. Lord John Eussell 
is untouched by the principal objections to the vote that 
led to the dissolution. He is accused by nobody of form- 
ing unworthy combinations. He is far above impeach- 
ment of faction. If he opposed the Government on one 
question, he supported it on others ; he supports it now ; 
he recommends it to the country as the best Government 
that is practicable in existing circumstances, and places the 
policy of maintaining it foremost among the ruling con- 
siderations of the crisis. — (1857.) 

THE STOP- GAP. 

Max is dearer to the gods than to himself, says the 
Eoman Poet. And certainly dearer to its opponents 
than to itself is the present Government. Indeed the 
opposition to it is not an opposition in the adverse sense 
of the word, but an opposition like that in mechanics, 



278 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

which serves for support. It is a Ministry shored up. 
Most curious, indeed, not to say whimsical, are the dis- 
positions regarding this Administration. Nobody wanted 
it in, and nobody wants it out. On the contrary, the 
hare in Gay's fable had not more friends or more need of 
them. The truth is, that Lord Derby stops a gap. His 
Government is borne, not for anything in it, but for what 
it keeps out. It stands like a dead wall between men 
and something they like worse. It keeps out Lord 
Palmerston, or it keeps out Lord John Eussell, for anti- 
pathy is now everything, and to thwart and balk some 
Mrs. Grundy is now the great object on the Liberal side 
of the House of Commons. ' I like my grandson,' said an 
old lord who had no love for his successor, ' because he 
is my enemy's enemy.' And many a member sitting on 
the Speaker's left likes Lord Derby's Ministry for a 
similar reason. It is adverse to what he is adverse to. 
For the great consideration now is not the service of the 
country — indeed it is almost held that the country wants 
nothing, and will do well enough in any hands — but the 
one thing studied is personal grudge. Nobody likes any- 
body ; everybody is against anybody's accession to power. 
It is an ostracism, a proscription. Our representatives, 
like the old man in the fable, have thrown down the 
bundle of sticks and involved death, but no farther runs 
the parallel, for they remain content with what Bacon 
calls the privative, the absence of both evil and good. 
One is angry with Lord Palmerston, another cannot 
forgive Lord John Eussell, and so on, and so they com- 
pound for Lord Derby. He contents the piques and 
jealousies. Such being the case, anxious has been the 



POLITICAL STltlCTUltES. 279 

wish that he should hold on in order to keep out, and much 
excellent counsel has he had to that end. The patient 
was to be kept quite quiet. He was to do nothing, not to 
stir, not to speak. He was to live on the delicacies his pre- 
decessors had left behind them. Had this regimen been 
strictly observed all would have been well, but unhappily, 
the incontinence of Lord Ellenborough has spoiled all. 
The father of a very foolish young man had been so often 
vexed by his son's exposures of himself, that he told him 
he would not take him into company except on the con- 
dition that he should never open his mouth except to put 
food into it. The youth promised obedience, but, at the 
first trial, it was not long before the young gentleman 
cried out from the bottom of a dinner table to the father 
at the top, ' Father ! father ! they have found me out ; a 
gentleman here says I am a ninny.' He had spoken, and 
the truth was revealed. And so the India Bill has 
spoken the wisdom of this Administration. 

Alas ! why did they not, as advised, stick to the leav- 
ings of their predecessors ? What demon prompted these 
choice Conservatives to innovate for their ruin ? A little 
duffing they might indeed have practised with safety. But 
what is duffing ? we may be asked. Duffing, as all atten- 
tive readers of the police reports know, is the art of 
giving such a gloss and air of novelty to old clothes, as to 
pass them off for new. A few days ago a man com- 
plained that he had bought a coat of a Jew as new, 
which it turned out he had sold him only a few days 
before at the price of rag. A little duffing might have 
passed off Lord Palmerston's India Bill as new, and Lord 
Derby's : but Lord Ellenborough would not content him- 



280 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

self with so modest an expedient, and, instead of merely 
raising the nap and freshening the hue, he must forsooth 
clap on his preposterous lace and embroidery. Einc illce 
lachrymce. 

It is easy now, no doubt, to rip up and rip off all the 
misplaced garniture, and to stand upon the borrowed 
article in its simplicity ; but, though the nonsense is 
dropped, the indication remains, and people ask, ' Is this 
the sense by which we are to be governed ? ' 

The first specimen of the capacity of the Ministry is the 
marvellous absurdity of the India Bill. Lord Derby pleads 
that there was no time to do better. We read in Guizot's 
' Memoirs ' that, when Louis XVIII. impatiently asked M. 
de Marbois for a certain Bill, the Minister answered, ' I 
am ashamed to tell your Majesty that it is ready.' 

The India Bill is an impromptu as unfortunate as it is 
cumbrous. Men ask, how the Government which acts so 
is to be kept on its legs. It seems to say with the Irish 
derangement of tenses, 'I will fall and no one shall help me.' 
Men, whose ruling desire is to keep out Lord Palm erston, and 
others whose ruling desire is to keep out Lord John Eussell, 
— and these are the two great desires that divide and 
possess the Liberal camp — are aghast at the result of the 
remarkable coup d'essai of the India Bill. They ask with 
consternation, what now stands between them and the 
restoration of a Liberal government, involving the re- 
establishment of Lord Palmerston, ay, and of Lord John 
Kussell too, in power ? For, as we have before ob- 
served, the main consideration now is men not measures 
— the men not to be preferred for the service of the 
country, but the men to be excluded for the satisfaction 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 281 

of piques and jealousies. How long this is to last, we 
know not, but this we do know that, whenever it ceases, 
down goes Lord Derby's Government. — (1858.) 

THE D0N"C ASTER DODGE. 

' Nothing that is not a real crime, makes a man appear so contemptible 
and little in the eyes of the world as inconstancy.' — Addison. 

Lord Derby is in a dilemma like that of Buridan's ass, 
between the two equal bundles of fodder. His experience 
of the incompatibilities of sportsmanship and statesman- 
ship having, as his friends affirm, driven him to the 
conclusion that he ought to renounce either the one or 
the other, the advantages and disadvantages of the two 
courses are so equally balanced that he no sooner re- 
solves to adopt either alternative than he straightway 
veers round to the other. It is understood that his first 
resolution was to sell off his Cabinet. ' For an auction of 
Ministers, Lucian afforded him a precedent in his auction 
of Philosophers : and surely, if a man may sell his sires, 
he may be allowed to sell his son ; but after the sorry be- 
haviour of one of his best bipeds at Slough, though as 
' notorious a roarer ' as Streamer himself, the whole lot 
were so depreciated that his lordship changed his mind, 
and determined to part with his stud. No sooner, how- 
ever, were his racers brought to the hammer, and a few of 
the least valuable actually disposed of, than the inconstant 
fit must have come on again, for he astonished the public 
by buying the remainder in himself. Nothing can be 
plainer than his lordship's difficulties. Suppose he had 
voluntarily cleared out his stables at Knowsley, and any 



282 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

untoward event in politics during next session had cleared 
out the stalls in Downing Street, without respect to his 
wishes or inclinations, what an awkward position he 
would have been placed in, with neither Houyhnhnms 
nor Yahoos, neither a stud nor a ministry. With either 
our Premier might be happy, but with neither there 
would not be a more disconsolate human being in the 
Queen's dominions. With either occupation, indeed, he 
must always enjoy no small share of the pleasures of both, 
for his lordship has always been a sportsman in politics, 
and we need not go beyond his last dodge the other day 
at Doncaster to prove that there never was a wilier poli- 
tician on the turf. But, with both occupations gone, Lord 
Derby himself would be no more. His fall would be 
heavier than Lucifer's, for he would fall from two heavens 
at once. There is a constancy therefore in the seeming 
inconstancy. The stable mind is palpable in his lordship's 
very instability. The knocking down of Toxophilite, for 
instance, to anyone but his owner might have been the 
knocking down of the Prime Minister himself. When it 
came to the point it was not to be thought of ; it was 
nothing short of a moral impossibility. His lordship 
could bear the thought of Toxophilite going any number 
of times, but not of Toxophilite gone, for then he felt he 
should be gone himself. If the auction of his lordship's 
political stock had proceeded, according to the first inten- 
tions, there is no reason to think he would have felt any- 
thing like the same pangs at the thought of parting with 
the best of them. We wonder what would have been the 
reserve price set on his Chancellor of the Exchequer, for 
instance ; or whether there would have been any reserva- 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 282 

tion at all. We suspect that, in the case of not a few of 
his parliamentary coursers, the auctioneer would have had 
orders to sell peremptorily. 

But the very best among them could not be expected 
to go off very well, for, though much too fast for their 
party, there is perhaps only one of the number that pos- 
sesses the speed required by the public, combined at least 
with the sure-footed qualities equally desirable in a Minister. 
We are by no means certain, however, that Lord Derby 
does not still meditate trying an auction of his men. 
This we infer from the rather ostentatious exhibi- 
tions going on up and down the country of the Ministerial 
paces. * Progress ' is the word in the language of the po- 
litical turf. From the recent speeches of some leading 
Conservative touters, there is really some reason to con- 
jecture that their chief is not only desirous to dispose of 
his Yahoo stud by public cant (a word most appropriate 
to the occasion), but that he even expects to have radical 
bidders. 

Supposing Messrs. Tattersall get orders to sell the 
members of her Majesty's Government, it is curious to ob- 
serve with what slight variation the same bill of sale would 
answer. At the first glance over the catalogue given last 
Saturday in the columns of the 'Times,' we actually thought 
we were reading a list of the Ministry. We have already 
mentioned the horse which from the description of ' the 
roarer ' we mistook for Mr. Disraeli. By Longbow we 
fancied that the auctioneer intended Lord Chelmsford. 
The Antiquary looked exceedingly like Lord John Man- 
ners ; if not, there was Wood-Nymph hitting off his lord- 
ship exactly in his office of the Woods and Forests. The 



284 POLITICAL STRICTURES. 

only difficulty we felt about the ' Caricature filly ' arose 
from the number of caricatures of Eeformers out of whom 
we had to choose. Mutineer stood, of course, for one of 
the few genuine Liberals in the Cabinet, who are neces- 
sarily in a state of chronic mutiny against their chief. We 
have our notion which we shall keep to ourselves, who 
was designed by ' the Meanee colt with nothing particular 
about him,' as also by Boomerang, ' whom nobody would 
bid for,' and that ' mean and not over-sound looking grey, 
BirdbolV As to Toxophilite, described as ' the lion of 
the sale,' from the high reserved price set upon him, it 
was impossible to doubt for a moment that Lord Stanley 
was intended ; and, setting aside the natural pride of the 
sire, we saw in this only another proof of Lord Derby's 
shrewdness in all such matters, his Minister for India 
being decidedly worth all the rest of the Cabinet put 
together. The sum named for so good a steed seemed 
extremely moderate, especially, as Mr. Tattersall justly ob- 
served, ' considering the value of his engagements, which, 
with health, he seems certain to win.' — (1858.) 

THE DOUBLE MALMESBURY. 

' Dm you ever hear me preach ' ? asked Coleridge of 
Charles Lamb. ' I never heard you do anything else,' 
was the reply. 

As unconscious of his practice as Coleridge, Lord 
Malmesbury asks whether he has ever been found advis- 
ing foreign Powers on the Italian question, the truth 
apparent in the Blue Book being, that he has done nothing 
else. But no one appears to know so little of what Lord 
Malmesbury has written as Lord Malmesbury himself ; 



POLITICAL STRICTURES. 285 

and if he looks at the volume of despatches he will per- 
haps be astonished to find how much he has played the 
monitor. Perhaps the fact may be accounted for in this 
way, that giving advice is a work of charity like giving 
alms, and the right hand does not know what the left 
hand has been doing. Certain it is that he evinces a 
strange ignorance of the character and tendency of his 
own despatches, so much so that one would be disposed 
to think Malmesbury the Mentor of foreign States and 
Malmesbury the critic of Lord John Eussell two different 
and very opposite persons. 

The responsibility of advising, against which we have 
lately heard such edifying lectures, was carried pretty far 
when the Austrian march against Piedmont was delayed 
four days at the instance of England. The Emperor 
Francis Joseph might attribute all his disasters to that 
yielding to the counsels of this country. It was holding 
his hand exactly when he might have struck with some 
effect. 

On the whole, excepting the affair of the Charles et 
Georges, Lord Malmesbury as Foreign Secretary acquitted 
himself creditably, and what he has done well is the more 
appreciated because it was so little expected of him. This 
reaction of opinion he evidently takes at more than its 
worth, and he plays the part of a political Malvolio cross 
gartered, and conceiting the public enamoured of him. 
To Lord John Eussell and such men he says, ' Go hang 
yourselves all, you are idle shallow things : I am not of 
your element' — (1859.) 



286 THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER EI. 
THE CHURCH. 



CONTRITION AND EGG- SAUCE. 

How is the world changed ! Time was, when contri- 
tion showed itself in beating the breast, tearing the hair, 
rending the garments, and screaming with energy. Now, 
the most pious man of the age proposes to settle the 
nation's long score of sins with one day of salt fish and 
egg-sauce. What penitence ! See twenty millions of 
sinners expiating their sins with fine large flakes of New- 
foundland cod, smothered in an egg-sauce rich with cream 
and stimulant with mustard, every glutton, as he gobbles 
it down, only remarking what a fine vehicle egg- sauce is 
for mustard ; and certainly it is so. If we ever write a 
tragedy, it shall be called ' Contrition ; ' and the hero, 
after a tissue of enormities, shall, by way of catastrophe, 
in the fifth act, order salt fish and egg-sauce in addition to 
his customary meal. — (1827.) 

THE BISHOPS. 

Our known zeal for the Church will not permit us to 
remain silent on some severe observations of Bentham 
on the wealth acquired by the clergy, in apparent 



THE CHURCH. 287 



contempt or defiance of the scriptural maxim that ' it 
were easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' 
The fault insinuated, if we are not egregiously mistaken, 
is in fact the sublimest virtue of our priests. Considering 
the great danger of wealth, they zealously strive to strip 
the people of so grievous an impediment to the salvation 
of souls. In performing this meritorious service, they of 
course sacrifice themselves ; but in this there is no kind 
of inconsistency. It is their heroism to suck the poison 
out of our pockets — to save us, and perish ! The public 
purpose and the personal practice of men may obviously 
be in complete opposition, without any kind of inconsis- 
tency. The intention of soldiers is to protect us from 
violence ; but for this very end the soldier himself falls 
by the sword. The physician is of all men the least 
careful of his health. Or an apter but homelier illustra- 
tion : the clerk at the White Horse Cellar or Golden 
Cross puts the whole world in train to travel, he indi- 
vidually being perhaps the most stationary person in 
London. Just so it is with our reverend clerks. They 
expedite us without ever stirring a step towards the same 
goal themselves. For this they surely merit our grati- 
tude rather than sarcasms. When a bishop dies worth 
£400,000, we should regard him as the absorbent of a 
poison that would have swollen up ten men to a needle- 
eye impracticability. Here is a clear saving of nine souls 
out of ten. In Ireland there are whole populations 
whose cows, pigs, and potatoes are so carefully looked to 
by the clergy that they would march through the eye of 
a needle by generations a-breast ; while in the Church 



288 THE CHURCH. 



there are camels in abundance a vast deal too corpulent to 
go through a bodkin, and which will find only one pair oi 
gates wide enough for their bloated proportions. Still, we 
repeat, the greater their merit. The mouse in the meal- 
cask, who lived so well as to grow too large to repass the 
hole, and who thus fattened himself into a prisoner, 
was merely a gluttonous creature ; but he would have 
deserved a far different, a divine character, had he 
devoured the meal to keep some fellow mice of a safe 
size— (1827.) 



Doctor Paris somewhere observes that the originals of 
the cabbage and cauliflower are not to be recognised in 
uncultivated nature. A Bishop of the present age has 
no more likeness to a Bishop of the New Testament and 
the Primitive Church, than a cauliflower or a red cabbage 
is like any spontaneous production of the field. It has 
taken 1800 years to bring Bishops to their present figure. 
The horticulturists can show nothing like it in the aggran- 
disement of gooseberries. The cultivation is simple 
enough, too — hot-housing and the manure of Mammon. — 
(1827.) 



Mr. Bowles thinks that Bishops should be rich in a 
country where blacking-men live in palaces. What ana- 
logy does he perceive between the two conditions? 
Blacking is certainly in free use in the Church just now, 
and it is laid on without much polish. But, to keep to 
the argument, we cannot perceive why the bishops should 
set forth in their lives a practical contradiction to the 



THE CHURCH. 289 



precepts of the gospel against riches, because blacking- 
men inhabit palaces. 

When Calonne asked Vestris his terms for an engage- 
ment at the Theatre Eoyal, the dancer modestly demanded 
100,000 francs a-year. The Minister exclaimed against 
the exorbitance of such terms, and observed that the 
King did not pay his Marshals at so high a rate ; upon 
which Vestris coolly replied — ' That is nothing to me. 
You may then tell His Majesty that he has only (/aire 
darner ses Marechaux) to make his Marshals dance.' 1 

The same retort applies to the bishops. If they want 
to be as rich as blacking-men, let them make blacking ; 
and it really is not much out of their present line. The 
handwriting on the wall points out their trade : Try 
Warren, try Turner. We can conceive the name that a 
Phillpotts would make in blacking. How he would 
shine ! 

We shall next be told that the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury is uneasy because Taglioni is better paid for dancing, 
or that Dr. Phillpotts thinks it hard that Paganini makes 
more money by playing on one string, or that Bishop 
Blomfield envies Crockford's fortune, and desires to keep 
a finer house— (1827.) 



1 This illustration was supplied by Count d'Orsay, who writes : — 

' My dear Fonblanque, — As you wish for the anecdote, here it is. M. de 
Calonne, le Ministre, desirant engager le grand Vestris pour le Th&itre Eoyal, 
lui demanda qu'elles tStaient ses pre" tensions pe*cuniaires. u Je demande," re- 
pondit il, " cent mille francs par an." " Mais, mon Dieu ! M. Vestris, c'est exor- 
bitant. Sa Majeste* n'y consentira jamais, car elle ne paye pas autant ses 
marechaux de France." " Cela m'est bien indifferent. Vous direz alors a sa 
Majeste qu'elle n'a que faire danser ses marechaux." Yours faithfully, 

d'Orsay.'— (Ed.) 

U 



290 THE CHURCH. 



It appears, by Probates at Doctors'Commons, that since 
1818 the personal property of twenty-four English Bishops, 
who have died within the last twenty years, amounts to 
the enormous sum of one million six hundred and forty- 
nine thousand pounds, or an average of nearly seventy 
thousand pounds for each Bishop. This, however, is 
merely the personal property as sworn to (and sworn to, 
in all probability, rather under than over the mark), and 
the value of the real property remains to be conjectured, 
and also the amount of dowers to daughters, and gifts during 
the lifetime of the holy men to sons, nephews, and other 
relatives. The value of the real property, which does not 
appear, may safely be inferred to exceed by far that of 
the personal, for the Bishops would naturally rather avoid 
the public display of their vast accumulations in the shape 
of personal property coming under general view in the 
Probates at Doctors' Commons. But, in many cases, we 
are not left to conjecture, for it is known that the real 
property was very considerable of Barrington, Cornwallis, 
Sparkes, and Tomline ; the last very great. 

Whether we put these things together, or whether we 
look separately and apart at the personal property of twenty- 
four Bishops amounting to one million six hundred and 
forty-nine thousand pounds, — a mere drop from the sacred 
fountain ; a scrap only of the Eight Eeverend Doctors' 
Commons, — we are filled with admiration of the distribu- 
tion of things in the 'Poor Man's Church.' For how 
much does the datum we have got leave us to consider 
and reflect upon ? It is like the piece of gold sticking to 
the sieve in the story of the ' Forty Thieves/ 



THE CHURCH. 291 



We remember a thirsty soul who used to play both 
sides at backgammon for a glass of punch, which, whether 
black or white won, he swallowed with infinite compla- 
cency at the victory ; and it is possible that the Bishops, 
holding their two hands in ignorance of each other's 
doings, may have given from one to the other, and taken 
to themselves the credit of charity, as the toper did the 
punch for the transaction in which loss and gain were 
balanced. 

That the charities of the holy men have, in their own 
opinions at least, been exceedingly onerous, appears cer- 
tainly in this fact, that they have conceived themselves 
driven to quarter their sons, kinsmen, and connexions on 
the Church, whether fitted for it or not, instead of provi- 
ding for them out of their own ample fortunes. — (1838.) 



We have often had occasion to marvel at the extra- 
ordinary warmth of Churchmen, especially when the 
Bishops of Exeter and London have been engaged in any 
dispute with their clergy or others ; and oddly enough, in 
glancing over the pages of a new elementary work on 
natural philosophy, 1 the solution of this phenomenon 
occurred to us. 

The passage which threw a light on the subject is 
this : — 

6 A black tea-pot is the very worst vessel that can be 
adapted for the preparation of that grateful beverage, tea. 



1 The Student's Manual of Natural Philosophy, by C. Tomlinson. Parker, 
Strand. 

tj2 



292 THE CHURCH. 



A silver tea-pot, exceedingly bright, is best adapted to 
the purpose. It has been said that the introduction of a 
tea-pot many years ago made of black unglazed earthen- 
ware has produced a loss to the British nation of millions 
of money.' 

The question instantly struck us, why are Churchmen 
black, then ? We reasoned at once from the colour of a 
tea-pot to the colour of a Phillpott, and we found the same 
law applicable to both. 

The principle is, that the superficial qualities which 
promote reflection are inimical to absorption of heat, 
and the radiating power is in direct proportion to that 
of absorption. 

Now, there are no such absorbents as Bishops, and the 
superficial qualities of their black cloth are inimical to 
reflection : but for radiating heat they are as incontinent 
as the black tea-pots aforesaid. The black tea-pots do not 
make good tea, because, instead of retaining their heat 
for what is put into them, they part with it outwards ; 
the black Churchmen have precisely the same fault. 
Instead of retaining their warmth for the charity and 
holiness with which they are charged, they throw out 
their heat on external objects, and lose the internal tem- 
perature necessary to extract the virtue of good-will to 
men, with the lessons of which they are stored. A 
Phillpotts with the leaves of Scripture in him inculcating 
charity, heating all around him while his charity gets cold 
in the same proportion, is like the black unglazed earthen- 
ware tea-pot, radiating or throwing out the heat which it 
should keep within to draw the goodness from its contents, 
and thus failing to perform its tnfH function. And this is 



THE CHURCH. 293 



because both vessels are of the wrong colour for their 
offices. 

The bright polished surfaces are those which absorb 
and radiate least and reflect most ; and, for a familiar ex- 
ample, the Manual before us instances fire-irons, which, 
if bright and polished, absorb scarcely any heat from the 
fire near which they are placed, while a dull unpolished 
set often become too hot to handle. Which sort of fire- 
irons some of the shovels, tongs, and pokers of the hier- 
archy are, it is quite unnecessary to explain. But so true 
is it, morally as well as materially, that the bright and 
polished are slowest to heat, and that their great powers 
of reflection are in inverse proportion to those of absorp- 
tion. With most of our Bishops, by fault no doubt of 
their black colour, on the contrary, the powers of absorp- 
tion are great, those of reflection small. 

Whose mischievous device was it to make ; the cloth ' 
black ? Angels are painted fair, and clad in robes of purest 
white. The arch-enemy is black for absorption and radi- 
ation of his fires. The Churchmen have strangely mistaken 
their livery. Why are they not white, bright like polished 
silver ? Who has to answer for having introduced the 
black unglazed earthenware tea-pots of the Church ? The 
error, which has perhaps cost us not less in the loss of 
charity than the black tea-pots in wasted tea-leaves, should 
be corrected without loss of time ; and, to begin, it would 
be well to try the effect of giving such a colour of candour 
to Bishop Phillpotts as white-lead can bestow. To stop 
his absorption and radiation of heat would be a great 
gain, and a great saving of the proprieties undoubtedly. — 
(1838.) 



294 THE CHURCH. 



Despots in the East put out the eyes of men whose 
rivalry they dread. The bigot party in the Church of 
England, refining on the same policy, would hold Dis- 
senters in darkness. Next to causing blindness is the 
expedient of withholding enlightenment. A prince in 
Persia deprives people obnoxious to him of a sense ; pre- 
lates in England would deny the objects of their jealousy 
instruction in the best uses of their faculties. Make a 
satrap in the East of a Bishop B, and he puts out the eyes 
of folks unpleasant to him with a red-hot iron ; meta- 
morphose the satrap into a Bishop, clothe him with lawn 
sleeves, and put a mitre on his head ; and, instead of 
poking an iron into people's eyes, he is content with 
refusing them the lights for the right guidance and im- 
provement of their powers of perception and reflection. 
These are but modifications of the same barbarous policy ; 
resources of the same merciless jealousy. 

When we see the part taken by Bishops against national 
enlightenment, it appears to us as though the mitre were 
worn expressly as the extinguisher to the lights of the 
age (and certainly with much frankness they set the 
example of putting the extinguisher on their own heads) ; 
and a measure for the improvement of intellectual cul- 
ture, as proposed by ministers, is regarded by the mitre 
with the kind of aversion with which we might imagine 
the candlestick extinguisher to look upon the office of 
its sectarian neighbour, the snuffers. 

In the costume of the High Church, indeed, types of 
remarkable directness and significance may be fancied 
when it is in its paroxysms of jealous rage ; and one of 



THE CHURCH. 295 



not the least curious is, that the episcopal head is crowned 
with either a mitre to extinguish light, or the shovel- 
hat, whose application seems to be to heap coals on fires 
which burn not to illumine but to inflame. — (1839.) 



Lord Brougham has made confession that in the part 
which he has taken against the beer-houses he has been 
the tool of the Bishops. 

Why the Bishops should entertain so inordinate an 
antipathy to the beer-shops, we could never understand. 
In the case of the prelate who first commenced hostilities 
there seems to be some reason for the antipathy, for the 
Bishop of Bath and Wells was titularly destined to be the 
antagonist of beer. But, if names have the force of things, 
there is another mild ornament of the Bench who should 
have felt himself hung up like a sign, as it were, to en- 
courage good cheer, and to act the part of the tapster's 
friend ; need we say that we mean Phillpotts ? a name 
which is manifestly either a corruption of the English 
Eillpots, or a hybrid compound of the Greek (piXog and 
the English pots, signifying a friend to pots and potations. 

It is a remarkable fact that the existence of crime and 
sin in the world before the date of the Beer Act appears 
to be utterly forgotten by the Bishops and their mouth- 
pieces. Public-houses are now talked of as if they were 
the temples of innocence, where no impure thoughts or 
evil purposes could be entertained. Going to the public- 
house seems now accounted as next, m the order of good 
habits, to going to church. — (1839.) 



296 THE CHURCH. 



A free Church of England would be a far more im- 
posing spectacle than the Free Kirk of Scotland. There 
was a subdued homeliness about the Exodus of the Pres- 
byterians ; but a Tractarian Exodus would rival, in the 
splendour of its robes and stately music, its hierarchical 
dignitaries and dependencies, that of the stoled and mitred 
bearers of the ark. 

Much we fear, however, that such an imposing spectacle 
is not destined for the profane eyes of this generation. It 
is a well-known law in physics that the force of attraction 
increases in proportion to the magnitude of the attracting 
body. It was comparatively easy for poor Presbyters to 
withdraw their bodies, by an effort of the will, from small 
manses, glebes of a couple of acres, and paltry two hun- 
dreds or three hundreds a-year. But to lift ponderous 
bishops and dignified clergy from broad men sal demesnes, 
huge cathedrals, and masses of gold counted by annual 
thousands, would be scarcely less difficult than to counter- 
act the attraction which holds us all fast to the ' great 
globe itself.'— (1847.) 



When a Bishop taken in battle was claimed by the Pope, 
the captor, in reply, sent the coat of mail in which the 
militant prelate was clad, asking, ' Is this the garment of 
thy son ? ' We are disposed to put a similar question to 
the heads of the Church, when we read certain proceed- 
ings in our Courts ; and with reference especially to an 
action, Brooks v. Rookes, we would ask the Bishop of 
the diocese, ' Is this the suit of thy son?' — (1849.) 



THE CHURCH. 297 



' The Brahraens among the Hindus/ says the his- 
torian of British India, ' have acquired and maintained 
an authority more commanding and extensive than the 
priests have been able to engross among any other por- 
tion of mankind.' 

We are disposed to question this assertion, seeing how 
closely parallel to the state and privileges of the Brah- 
mens are those of our favoured Bishops. 

Mill, presently afterwards, informs us that the first 
among the duties is to honour the Brahmens, and that 
the slightest disrespect to one of this sacred order is the 
most atrocious of crimes. And is not also disrespect, 
real or pretended, to any of our Prelates, treated and 
resented as the most atrocious of crimes ? 

6 For contumelious language to a Brahmen,' says the 
law of Menu, c a Sudra must have an iron style, ten 
fingers long, thrust red-hot into his mouth ; and for 
offering to give instruction to priests, hot oil must be 
poured into his mouth and ears.' 

For contumelious language to a Bishop the hot-iron 
style is not thrust into the mouth with us, but, instead 
of it, Sir Benjamin Hall was the other day subjected to 
the hot-iron style of the ' Times/ in an article of torture 
full ten fingers long. 

The offer of instruction to priests is resented here pretty 
much as in Hindostan, and Bishop Blomfield is the 
executioner who pours hot oil into the offender's ears. 

c For striking a Brahmen even with a blade of grass, 
or overpowering him in argument, the offender must 
soothe him by falling prostrate.' 



298 THE CHURCH. 



This penally is always clamorously demanded on those 
frequent occasions in the two Houses of Parliament, 
when any member has the temerity to confute a Bishop. 

Having recounted the extraordinary privileges and 
prerogatives of the Brahmens, Mill proceeds to observe : 
'With these advantages, it would be extraordinary had 
the Brahmens neglected themselves in so important a cir- 
cumstance as the command of property.' 

Have the Bishops ? 

4 It is an essential part of the religion of the Hindus 
to confer gifts upon the Brahmens. This is a precept 
more frequently repeated than any other in the sacred 
books.' 

Here certainly there is a difference, for there is no such 
precept in our sacred books, but the very contrary. A 
Pagan, however, who was utterly ignorant of our Scrip- 
tures, might not unreasonably infer, from the episcopal 
state, that our Gospel specially enjoined the acquisition of 
wealth as the root of all good ; that it inculcated pride, 
and recommended purple and fine linen for its clothing ; 
and that, m token of their devout faith in these lessons, 
the Bishops wear the lawn on their own sleeves, and put 
their servants into the livery of the imperial hue devoted 
to the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. 

But there is another difference in the passage last 
quoted between the Brahmens and our Bishops. Our 
Bishops do not ask for gifts, they take ; they help them- 
selves, and liberally enough. If you want to know how, 
and how largely, you will* see it written in the Blue- 
books. 



THE CHURCH. 299 



'When treasure is found, which, from the general 
practice of concealment and the state of society, must 
have been a frequent event, the Brahmen may retain 
whatever his good fortune places in his hands.' 

The Bishop does the same when a Horfield lease or 
any other good thing falls in. 

The Brahmen was superior to the Sovereign, as the 
Bishop of Exeter claims to be, by virtue of his holy office, 
supreme over which is only Heaven itself. 

The British Brahmens must not be called to account for 
transactions for which other orders of men would be 
held severely responsible. The established rule for the 
treatment of impugnments of British Brahmens is this : To 
carry to the account of the accuser all the opprobrium 
belonging to the acts charged. If H. prove that British 
Brahmens have taken what they have no fair claim to, 
and that the Church has suffered wrong thereby, H. is 
treated as a sacrilegious thief, and the hue and cry are 
raised after him. 

It is in vain for him to ask whether the facts are right 
or wrong. The answer is, that hostility to religion must 
be the motive for the charge. There is no hostility to 
religion, on the other hand, in any act a British Brahmen 
may commit, however much it may be detrimental to the 
Church and the spiritual instruction of the people. What 
he may do, though it may stint and starve the religious 
ministration, cannot be hostile to religion ; but the re- 
presentation of it, or exposure, as it is coarsely called, is 
always denounced as hostile to religion. 

A profane Pagan dramatist took another view of ar- 



300 THE CHURCH. 



raigmnent for misdeeds. Sophocles makes Electra reply 
to a charge of abusive language in lines thus rendered by 
Milton: 

'Tis you that say it, not I j you do the deeds, 
And your unrighteous deeds find me the words. 

But this plea is not allowed to hold good in the particular 
case of charges against the British Brahmen. 

The Eomish Brahmens in some particulars more closely 
resemble their brethren in India than the British. A 
short time ago several Italian gentlemen were thrown into 
gaol for the offence of reading the Bible. See how the 
parallel offence was treated in Hinclostan : 

'If,' says the Gentoo Code, 'a man of the Sooder 
reads the beids of the Shaster, or the Pooran, to a Brah- 
men, a Chether, or a Bin, then the Magistrate shall heat 
some bitter oil, and pour it into the aforesaid Sooder's 
mouth ; and if a Sooder listens to the beids of the Shas- 
ter, then the oil, heated as before, shall be poured into 
his ears, and areez and wax shall be melted together, and 
the orifices of his ears shall be stopped therewith. If a 
Sooder gets by heart the beids of the Shaster, the 
Magistrate shall put him to death. If a Sooder always 
performs w T orship and the jugg, the Magistrate shall put 
him to death.' 

The Eomish Brahmens do not go quite these lengths ; 
at least, not at present. — (1851.) 



A jolly Judge of former days used to maintain that 
all wines were good, some better than others, but none 



THE CHURCH. 301 



bad. And so, too, it seems to be with Bishops. All 
Bishops are good ; some better than others, perhaps, but 
none bad. Whether a Bishop is as busy as a bee, or 
whether there are no outward and visible signs of his ex- 
istence, is all the same. In either ease the diocese has 
nothing to complain of. Some years ago it was a question 
for the curious whether there was extant a Bishop of Ely. 
The only sign of his existence was the regular collection 
of the revenue. The dues were looked to, but the duties 
had totally disappeared. As Bel's divinity was proved 
from his eating much meat, so the Bishop of Ely's ex- 
istence was demonstrated from his pocketing much 
money. And we have now on the Episcopal Bench some 
who do much, overmuch it may be ; some who do little ; 
and some who do absolutely nothing. But it makes no 
difference to the dioceses, all are equally well governed. 
Are there, then, no bad Bishops ? is such a thing impossi- 
ble ? or are there no good ones ? 

Once upon a time Berne depended for its prosperity 
upon certain bears, which were potently believed to be 
indispensable to its very existence. The bears (be sure) 
were handsomely endowed, and maintained like Bishops. 
It chanced that they all died from over-feeding before suc- 
cessors could be provided. There was an end of Berne. 
The inhabitants were in despair. The misfortune was 
without remedy. The canton was desolate, and looked 
for instant dissolution. But to their astonishment the sun 
rose the next day, and things took their course just as if 
bears were not indispensable to the well-being of Berne. 
And it was soon discovered that Berne could do as well 
without bears as with bears, saving the expense of their 



302 THE CHURCH. 



keep to boot. Berne was thenceforth satisfied with hav- 
ing its bears for the future in its armorial bearings. 

Some of our sees are in the state of Berne bereft of its 
bears. They have Bishops in such a state as to be the 
same thing to them as no Bishops, excepting as to the 
maintenance of the same. They have become as well 
reconciled to this condition of things as the folks of Berne 
to the loss of their bears. The King Log dynasty in the 
Church is indeed far from unacceptable. This happy 
state of things is disturbed to some extent by a Bill pro- 
viding for the retirement of the Bishops of London and 
Durham, 

These holy men do not resign their bishoprics on the 
ground of incapacity to perform their duties, leaving it 
with the State to make such provision for them as it may 
think fit ; but they resign on conditions, and pretty hand- 
some conditions ; thus plainly implying that they would 
continue to hold the sees, for the discharge of the duties of 
which they are confessedly incompetent, if the quid pro quo 
were not granted. Advanced as they are in age, they 
are not for taking no heed of the morrow, nor for being- 
fed like the young ravens, to which diet they much prefer 
the allowance of the cormorant. We cannot but admit 
the force of the objections which Lord Eedesdale urged 
against this arrangement, which he urged should never be 
regarded in the light of bargains. Men should not say, 
1 Give a little more and I will do it ; give a little less and 
I will not do it ' ; but they should come forward and 
say, i I am incapable of performing the duties which my 
office imposes on me, and I wish to resign that office. 
Give me enough to live upon, and that is all I require. , 



THE CHURCH. 303 



He had no hesitation in saying this arrangement was of 
the character of a bargain and partook of a simoniacal 
character. 

Of course such an occasion as this for bepraising the 
two Bishops was not thrown away. ' Good things,' says 
Bacon, ' are never seen in their full beauty till they turn 
their backs and be going away.' Dr. Maltby, being in 
this posture, presents to admiration his liberality in money 
matters ; Dr. Blomfield his temper and moderation. It 
would have touched a heart of stone to hear the Primate 
holding forth on the virtues of the Bishop of London. 
But we were especially struck with this topic of laudation, 
and argument for a thumping pension : 

' If the Bishop of London had thought himself at liberty 
to use his episcopal income for the purpose of making to 
himself a fortune or of aggrandising his family, he might 
easily have become independent of any retiring salary.' 

We are thus to understand that a Bishop is not under 
an imperative obligation to minister to charities, but that, 
as a matter of calculation, he may safely do so with the 
lively expectation that the Legislature will one day make 
it up to him, so that it shall cost him nothing in effect. 
He may cast his bread upon the waters, and fish up a fat 
pension in return. 

There are other Bishops who have been exceedingly 
careful in providing for their progeny, and whose conduct 
in that respect is not thought censurable by their brethren. 
Nor would their pensions, if pensioned they were to be, be 
diminished one stiver in consideration of their notorious 
nepotism. But Bishops are exceptions to all rules, and, 
whatever they do, they are equally good and deserving of 



304 THE CHURCH. 



handsome provisions. There is always a reason fair for 
filhng their pockets again. — (1856.) 

CHURCH RATES. 

A Scotchman, who had stoutly maintained that the 
vines of his native land produced, without the aid of the 
hot-house, as fine grapes, to his taste, as any under the 
sun, added the important explanation of his judgment, 
6 But I must premise that I like the grapes a wee sour.' 

A frank admission of this kind would solve the opposi- 
tion to the project for the abolition of Church Eates. 
Ministers may talk of the sweets of peace and concord, 
but there are some amongst us who ' like the grapes a 
wee sour.'— (1827.) 

EPISCOPAL CATECHISM. 

Why do the Bishops in- Because the words of 
sist that wealth is necessary Christ are — ' How hard is 
to maintain the respect of it for them that trust in 
the clergy in the eyes of the riches to enter into the 
world; and why do they kingdom of God! It is 
take for their own share easier for a camel to go 
£150,000 a-year ? through the eye of a needle 

than for a rich man to enter 
into the kingdom of God.' 

Why is purple the livery Because purple and fine 
of the Bishops ; and why linen are the scriptural 
do they wear lawn sleeves ? symbols of ' the pomps and 

vanities and sinful lusts of 
the flesh ' from which Bishops 
pray to be delivered. 



THE CHURCH. 



SOI 



Why are the Bishops Because it is written in 
sworn on their consecration the Gospel, . c Swear not at 
to perform certain duties ? all.' 



Why is it held that the 
rich bishoprics are the prizes 
necessary to tempt men into 
the service of religion ? 



Because Paul teach es that , 
if a man desire the office of 
a Bishop, he desireth a good 
work j and because he says 
that a Bishop should not be 
greedy of filthy lucre. 



Why is the prospect of 
translations to richer sees 
open to Bishops ? 



Because Paul taught 
Timothy that the love of 
money is the root of all 
evil, and warned the men 
of God to flee those things. 



Why is the voluntary 
principle so abhorred by the 
Bishops ; and why do they 
allege that to support the 
Church by voluntary con- 
tributions would be against 
the glory of God ? 



Because David set the 
example of the voluntary 
principle at the building of 
the Temple, and it is written 
that the people having made 
their offerings willingly they 
rejoiced, because, with 
perfect heart, they offered 
willingly to the Lord ; and 
also because in the New 
Testament all the services to 
the Founder of Christianity 
are spontaneous. — (1827.) 



x 



306 THE CHURCH. 



THE BITTEE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. 

Me. Plumptee's Bill for the Bitter Observance of the 
Sabbath has passed the second reading. Its false, partial, 
and Pharisaical character appears in the inconsistency 
between the general prohibition proposed and the pre- 
amble ; the keeping of the Lord's Day (according, of course, 
to the letter of the Scriptural commandment) being the 
professed object of the preamble, and the general prohi- 
bition, to carry it into effect, carefully omitting the kind 
of labour necessary to the comforts and luxuries of the 
rich, the kind of labour specially named in the Mosaic 
commandment, the labour of man-servants and maid- 
servants. But the Pharisee, Mr. Plumptre, limits his 
prohibition to any manner of labour, or any work in the 
way of trade or business, keeping shop, buying or selling ; 
so that there is nothing against menial labour, though ex- 
pressly forbidden in the law of Moses, upon which this 
piece of hypocritical legislation proceeds. 

If omnibuses and stage-coaches are not to run on Sun- 
days, let chains be placed across every street, and the 
turnpike-gates closed throughout the country; for, if travel- 
ling or driving about on Sundays be a profanation of the 
Sabbath, it should be forbidden equally to rich and poor ; 
and, if the protection of drivers and cads against Sunday 
labour be desirable, as much consideration at least is due 
to gentlemen's servants, coachmen, grooms, &c. If Sunday 
baking is to be prohibited, let a clause be proposed impos- 
ing heavy penalties on any person or persons requiring 
any cook, or other domestic servant, to perforin any 
culinary office on Sunday, and making hot dinners 



THE GEUBCH. 307 



seizable and forfeit. But a more comprehensive enact- 
ment, embodying the principle of the Bill and carrying 
it into full and impartial effect, would be the prohibition 
of any kind of menial service on the Sabbath day, and to 
fine heavily any master or mistress giving any orders to 
servants. Soldiers and sailors should also be released 
from duty of any sort ; and also the police, for what right 
has Society to employ them on Sundays, any more than 
bakers or vintners, if it be sinful ? As for the thieves, if 
they choose to pursue their avocations on Sunday there is 
no help for it, for policemen have souls to be saved as 
well as their neighbours, and . consciences, we have no 
doubt, quite as tender about Sunday labour. Let the 
Guards, too, be asked whether they have not scruples 
about doing duty in sentry-boxes on Sundays, and it will 
be found that their case is not less hard than that of the 
bakers. 

If it be proposed to close public-houses and inns, let 
an amendment be proposed for shutting up the clubs, for 
closing the Zoological Gardens, the Parks, and Kensington 
Gardens. Certain Bishops, who frequent clubs during 
the hours of Divine service for the purpose of eating their 
hot luncheons, may find such an enactment an intolerable 
grievance ; but the cooks of clubs have souls to be saved, 
and consciences to be consulted, as well as those persons 
about whose protection the Agnewites profess so vehement 
a concern. — (1838.) 



Let it not be supposed for one moment that, in op- 
posing a fault in one direction, we favour one in another. 

x2 



308 THE CHURCH. 



We object sti'ongly to any work on the Sabbath which 
can be dispensed with, without sacrificing the comforts 
and recreations cheering the day of rest. We look upon 
the Sabbath as a blessed institution, which should be 
jealously guarded against invasion ; and we hold that all 
that can be done to diminish toil without diminishing the 
innocent enjoyments of those who have only one day in 
seven for enjoyment is good; but 

Some must watch while some do sleep, 
Thus runs the world away ; 

and, as the ease and innocent recreations of the manv 
can only be had by the toil of some of their number, 
let care only be had that there is no more toil than is 
necessary for the main object. — (1843.) 



Sir Andrew Agnew has had the impertinence to ad- 
monish the Queen as to the observance of the Sabbath. 
The lecture is conveyed in a letter to Lord Aberdeen, 
which we must suppose his Lordship must have seen the 
propriety of returning to the writer. 

The foolish Knight declares that Scotland is a ' strict 
Sabbath-observing country, in the true Scriptural sense 
of the word ;' the whole question between it and Eng- 
land being, which is the true Scriptural sense of the 
word, since some of the highest authorities regard the 
Mosaic observance of the Sabbath as contrary to the 
precepts of the New Testament. 

The Pharisee's letter deals in that free and familiar 
use of holy names and references which is highly pro- 
fane, and in one place he presumes to pray that ' the 



THE CHURCH. 309 



Sabbath may be a sign between God and Her Majesty, 
whereby Her Majesty may know that He is the Lord her 
God.' As the Sabbath here meant is the strict Scotch 
Sabbath, the direct implication is that, when Her Majesty 
does not observe that Sabbath, she betrays that she does 
not know her God. The insolence, the spiritual conceit, 
the puritanical cant, the presumption, the profaneness of 
this are all on a par. 

There is one characteristic trait of worldliness in the 
epistle. After having assigned all godliness to Scotland, 
the Pharisee intimates plainly enough that the example 
of the Court may, one way or the other, influence the 
habits of the people ; thereby implying that the hold of 
the asserted Scriptural rule is so slight on the minds of 
the people, or the influence of a Court so much stronger 
than the Scriptural authority, that the custom of ages 
might be shaken by the passing spectacle of a devia- 
tion from it in great personages. He writes indeed 
of ' the overwhelming moral influence of the example of 
the Court.' And is the moral influence so ' overwhelming ' 
in i a Sabbath- observing country in the true Scriptural 
sense of the word ' ? He thus does the people of Scot- 
land the injustice of supposing that there is not amongst 
them a moral and a religious authority superior to any 
example of a Court. But this inconsistency is the con- 
sequence of the sycophancy which is as natural to this sort 
of character, as its insolence and presumption ; and the 
Pharisee, however audaciously he may aspire to Heaven, 
is never long without creeping on his belly to some 
earthly idol.— (1844.) 



310 THE CHURCH. 



Several articles on the interruption of railway travel- 
ling on Sunday in Scotland may be in the remembrance of 
our readers, in which, amongst other objections to this 
puritanical rule, we suggested the very possible case of its 
preventing the attendance on the sick or dying. This 
apprehension has been signally and most cruelly verified. 

The Duchess of Sutherland having received intelligence 
that her father, Lord Carlisle, was in imminent danger, 
hastened from Dunrobin Castle to Perth, where she 
arrived on Sunday morning in time for the mail train. 
To her Grace's astonishment and dismay, she was informed 
that travelling on Sunday was not permitted. The object 
of the Duchess's journey was stated to the officers of 
the Company ; but the reply was peremptory, that the 
Directors' rule against Sunday travelling could not on any 
plea be infringed. 

The train went off with the mail and empty carriages, 
leaving the afflicted daughter weeping on the platform. 
Was this Christianity, was it charity, was it common 
humanity ? 

The Duchess had recourse to hiring a steam-boat to 
cross the ferry and make her way to Edinburgh, and 
thence on to Castle Howard ; but, so delayed, before she 
arrived her father had expired. The pharisees of the 
railway had prevented the dying father's last leave of his 
child, the afflicted daughter's consolation of soothing his 
last moments. Again we ask, was this Christianity, was 
it charity, was it common humanity ? We tell these men 
of spiritual conceit that there was in the daughter's mission 
to a dying father's bedside all the piety which their hollow 



THE CHURCH. 311 



rule of form and observance really wants, and that they 
have refused ministration to the holiest purpose, and dese- 
crated the Sabbath by a brutal inhumanity. We are not 
to be told that they could not have contemplated the 
case. They may not have contemplated the case in the 
person of a lady of rank, but in the ordinary course of 
events the same case must be of frequent occurrence 
among the humble and the poor, who cannot make known 
or heeded the wound to their feelings. 

In this instance the pharisaical nature of the rule is 
beyond all question, as servants were employed upon the 
train whether passengers travelled by it or not ; and the 
pretence of sparing toil cannot be put forth. And observe 
the inconsistent consequences : because the Duchess was 
not allowed to travel in the train, she was compelled to 
have recourse to a steam-vessel, and to put in requisition 
the services of her engineers and crew, who would have 
had their rest on the Sabbath if the train had taken 
passengers. And thus this puritanical rigour defeats its 
professed object ; we say its professed object, for the true 
object is merely to swell and pamper the spiritual conceit 
of the pharisees. 

The strictest of these Agnewites does not scruple to use 
his and his servants' legs on Sunday ; and what matters it in 
point of principle whether locomotion is effected by con- 
veyance in a train or walking, the mail-train putting in 
requisition the work of servants on the Sabbath, whether 
passengers go by it or not ? If Lord Carlisle had been lying 
at the point of death a league from Perth, would Ins 
daughter's hastening her steps to the spot have been a 
profanation of the Sabbath ; and if not, how could her 



312 THE CHURCH. 



travelling in a train, have been an act of profanation, it 
being merely another mode of locomotion ? The plea of 
the employment of servants will not avail in this instance, 
for the mail service put them in requisition equally. 

Let us suppose that the railroads, which have super- 
seded posting, did not exist : what would have been thought 
of an innkeeper who refused post-horses to a person 
hurrying to a dying parent ? Would he not have been 
execrated, and for the prevention of a repetition of such a 
cruelty would not his license even, his means of livelihood, 
have been withdrawn ? 

The example of the Perth puritanism is but, however, 
an extreme example of the inhumanity ; and many other 
minor inhumanities — bad enough though minor — are inci- 
dental to the same suspension of communication, stopping 
the harmless innocent pleasures and healthful recreations. 
Every line ought to be compelled by law to convey 
passengers in the mail trains on Sunday. Interest suffices 
to provide the means of communication on week days : 
but to control puritanical crotchets the law should oblige 
companies to observe the duties of humanity on the 
Sabbath, in forwarding attendance on the sick, and in giving 
the artisan, clerk, student, &c, who have toiled in dark 
chambers and foetid atmosphere, change of scene and 
wholesome air. 

We have heard that the Scotch directors of the Perth 
Company are not to blame for the prohibition of Sunday 
travelling, but that it has been the result of a very dis- 
honest manoeuvre for ascendency, in which some southern 
gentlemen have played a most dirty part. — (1848.) 



THE CHURCH. 313 



THE ABBEY AND BYRON S STATUE. 

Colonel Leicester Stanhope has petitioned the two 
Houses of Parliament to interfere against the bigotry of 
the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, and open the 
doors of the Abbey to a statue in honour of Lord Byron, 
subscribed for by men of all parties, executed by the 
great Thorwaldsen, and now lying in a packing-case at 
the Custom-house, where it has already lain upwards of 
four years. 

It is perfectly true that Lord Byron's religious opinions 
were not known to his most intimate friends, and for the 
best of all possible reasons, because Lord Byron himself 
did not know them. Nor should we affect to conceal 
that it is as the author of ' Don Juan ' equally as the author 
of c Cain ' that Lord Byron is thus treated. But a claim 
for admission into Westminster Abbey rests on grounds 
over which religious belief, or personal infirmity of cha- 
racter, have seldom, in the most barbarous ages, been 
suffered to have control ; and the refusal to admit the claim 
in the present instance carries bigotry and barbarism to their 
most monstrous pitch. We are no enthusiastic admirers of 
the noble poet, either in his writings or character : but his 
title to a place in Westminster Abbey, judged by the major- 
ity of poets who have places there, is surely indisputable. 
If Dr. Ireland and his friends set up any personal claim 
over the Abbey as a chapel for private prayers — on which 
plea alone could they sustain this refusal — they should 
act consistently by craving permission to turn out at the 
same time the statues of all the infidels, Eoman Catholics, 
or religion-less or vicious men, who already occupy niches 



314 THE CHURCH. 



there ; very many, if not the majority of whom, we will 
venture to add, were neither so great as Lord Byron in 
their genius, nor so prudent in their vices. This is not a 
pleasant subject, nor do we think it necessary to pursue 
it farther, for we cannot doubt that at the very first op- 
portunity the reproach and disgrace which have been cast 
upon our nation in the eyes of intelligent foreigners by 
this gross bigotry of our Very Eeverend Dean and Chapter 
will be effaced by higher authority than theirs. Mean- 
while Colonel Stanhope deserves high praise for calling 
public attention to the matter. — (1838.) 

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK. 

There is no business more difficult than that of selling 
a sermon ; but see how cleverly the thing is done, by hook 
or by crook, by giving out that the preacher has been 
dismissed from a Court Chaplaincy in consequence of de- 
livering a certain discourse. The story is presently 
contradicted, but the sermon is in demand throughout 
the country. How Warren and Eowland must envy such 
a hit as this. It is of the highest genius in the art of 
puffing, and, successful as it has been, it is so unique in 
its nature as not to allow of imitation or repetition. The 
instance nearest to it is that mentioned by Horace Wal- 
pole, of a couple of China jars which had been for a long 
time in vain exposed for sale. It chanced that one of 
them was cracked by the shock of an earthquake ; upon 
which the shopkeeper demanded for the damaged jar ten 
times the price that he had asked before for the sound 
pair ; and, advertising it as the only China jar cracked by 
the great earthquake, he presently got a purchaser. Dr. 



THE CHURCH. 315 



Hook has had the advantage of passing for a cracked jar 
— a divine broken by a Court-quake — and all the gobe- 
mouche world has been curious to see the crack in his 
discourse. — (1838.) 

THE DANGERS OF SOBRIETY. 

The Tories have hit upon a new source of danger to 
the State and the Protestant interest, in the progress 
that has been made in temperance in Ireland, under the 
auspices of a Eoman Catholic priest, or friar, named 
Mathew. 

Opposed to reformations in general, the Tories make 
no exception in the case of drunken habits. Mr. Litton 
considers the growing disuse of whiskey in his native 
country an ' awful ' symptom. Ireland is becoming 
frightfully sober, as well as horribly loyal and peaceable. 
Certain it is she was never eminent for any of these 
qualities in the happy days of Tory power. 

In Ireland the Tories are not for standing in the 
ancient ways, but for staggering in them. The shebeen- 
house partakes the reverence paid to the Established 
Church. In a war with the whiskey shops they see a 
crusade against the Protestant faith itself. ' Awful ' is 
the only adjective fit to paint the state of a country 
where the people are beginning to abstain from the use 
of ardent spirits. 

We now learn, for the first time, that intemperance is 
a Protestant quality, and sobriety a Popish one. Perhaps 
the Tories hate temperance because it is a cardinal virtue. 
Mr. Litton carries out the No-Popery principle to this 
extreme length. 



316 THE CHUBCE. 



Mathew, the apostle of temperance, will make few 
proselytes among the Tories ; indeed, we have not yet 
heard of his having preached to either the parsons or 
the corporations, doubtless through despair of converting 
either from their bibulous and jolly ways. The Irish 
parsons interpret literally the command to ' labour in the 
vineyard.' They keep the grape for themselves, and 
would bestow the grape-shot upon the people. 

It was certainly a daring impertinence on the part of 
a Popish priest to be the first to step forward to preach 
abstinence and sobriety. Father Mathew should have 
waited until some clergyman of the Establishment set 
him the example ; but this is only one more instance of 
the encroaching spirit of the Church of Home. It is quite 
too bad not to allow the clergy of the State-religion to lead 
the way in a single enterprise of philanthropy. — (1840.) 



The ' Times' has taken up this subject of new alarm 
in its best strain. It draws the worst inferences from 
' the desertion of the dram shop ; ' it points out the 
dangers of ' a temporary dereliction of the use of whiskey ;' 
it argues that sobriety is the worst of all signs in Ireland, 
who, according to its reasoning, is never peaceable unless 
she is dead drunk. 

What is to be done in this case ? How is the danger 
to be met ? The Irish Church, itself a model of excess, 
has failed in the function which it was best calculated to 
perform, that of keeping up habits of intemperance. 
What have the clergy been about? Where are the 
Bcresfords, the O'Sullivans, the M'Neilles ? What are they 



THE CHURCH. 317 



doing ? How have their examples lost . their force ? 
While they were fighting for their tithes, the dangers of 
temperance were unknown, unheard of. This frightful 
change to sobriety is one of the direct consequences of 
the commutation. 

Be the cause what it may, sobriety to a frightful 
extent exists ; and how is it to be cured ? 

Various expedients have occurred to us. First, there 
is the opium trade of the East India Company at present 
at a stand, and might not Ireland* be made to swallow 
it ? If so, the Emerald Isle would serve as a place of 
ease to China. Lord Stanley could frame an Opium 
Coercion Act which might be effective. It should impose 
heavy penalties on all persons able to stand after dark, 
and empower constables to search houses between 
sun and sun and apprehend any people found in their 
beds, or able to give an account of themselves. For 
the first offence fine and imprisonment should be 
awarded ; but any man found sober twice should be 
transported. 

Such a measure would not be without its merits : but 
we confess that there is something of innovation in it 
which displeases us, and we should prefer a scheme 
more strictly analogous with the existing institutions of 
Ireland. 

There is now unhappily a surplus of Whiskey as well 
as of Church, and why not adopt the system for the one 
case which is preserved in the other ? The people won't 
take whiskey. Whose fault is that ? Surely not the 
fault of the whiskey or the whiskey shops. The analogy 
is at hand ; the people won't take Protestant doctrines : 



318 THE CHURCH. 



but is that any reason for letting the Protestant Church 
diminish ? 

Endow the whiskey shops. Charge the teetotallers for 
the whiskey, whether they drink it or not. Let there be 
well-paid publicans to fill gills of whiskey whether there 
be customers to swill the liquor or not ; keep up the 
whiskey establishment in every district for the one or 
two jolly fellows who may remain, or, if there be none, 
for the chance that a toper may arise. Incur not the 
risk that in any parish there may be one thirsty soul, and 
he unprovided with a dram. Find a Toby Fillpots, and 
put him in a dram palace at the head of the whiskey 
establishment. And here let us direct attention to the 
prophetic dispensation of Bishop Phillpotts' name, which 
has cried aloud the remedy against the evil that has now 
befallen the third part of the United Kingdom, — if united 
we can call a kingdom distracted with sobriety ; two- 
thirds of which are as drunk as ever, and the third 
altogether given up to temperance, abandoned to tee- 
totalism, steeped to the lips in water. — (1840.) 



ROAST PAPIST. 

We have heard of a temperate English gentleman who 
warned his friends, when they went to dine with him, 
that they were only to expect two dishes, for he never 
had more : but the guests who reckoned even on this 
choice were disappointed.; for the two dishes turned out 
to be two legs of mutton, and both roasted. The only 
difference was, that one was at the top and the other at 
the bottom. So with the resolutions of the London 



THE CHUBGH. 319 



Protestant Operative Society. They have no idea of 
serving up anything beyond a roasted Papist. Every 
course is the same. — (1840.) 

INTOLERANT CHARITY. 

Miss Sellon, the professed Sister of Mercy, has erased 
Lord Campbell's name from the list of contributors to 
the charities she administers, on the ground of his par- 
ticipation in the judgment on the Gorham case. 1 

The Eoman satirist charged the Jews with an intoler- 
ance so narrow and unfeeling that out of their own sect 
they would not point the way to the traveller, nor show 
the thirsty the desired spring. 

Miss Sellon has surpassed this imputed extreme of the 
bitterest bigotry, for she will not allow the distressed to 
be succoured by those who do not join in her theological 
dogmas, and will have no partners in doing good who 
deviate a particle from her interpretation of the doctrines 
of the Church. Is this the spirit of mercy whose quality 
is not strained? Is it the spirit of charity, is it the 
spirit of Christianity, which deprecates the judgment of 
the erring upon the erring brother ? 

Alas ! the Sister of Mercy turns out to be a misnomer ; 
she is the Sister of Bigotry, the Sister of Phillpotts. 

But Miss Sellon out-Phillpotts Phillpotts. The Bishop 

1 The dignified reply of Lord Campbell to Miss Sellon's communication 
concluded with this paragraph : — 

' I must confess that you do not seem to me to have made any way in 
proving that my concurrence in the decision of the Judicial Committee in 
the Gorham case should disqualify me humbly to assist you in taking care 
of orphans, in providing a Christian education for the children of worthless 
parents, and in mitigating the physical sufferings of our fellow-creatures.' — 
(Ed.) 



320 THE CHURCH. 



of Exeter is too true a son of the Church to allow 
doctrinal scruples to disturb the order of handing round 
charity plates or collecting offerings. The Church has 
never scrutinised the sources of contributions for its pious 
uses. It has taken no narrow views of pecuniary sub- 
scriptions : its views have been of the width of its 
pocket. It has in its great liberality levied rates for the 
* support of its buildings indifferently upon Dissenters of 
all classes. It has never said to any man, Turk or Jew, 
' You are no son of mine, and I will have none of your 
money.' On the contrary, it has shown itself so superior 
to any such prejudice as to have distrained for the dues 
of nonconforming defaulters, and to have sold up the 
Bibles of sectarian recusants to pay its demands. 

Miss Sellon deigns to pray for the heretic whose con- 
tributions to works of charity she spurns as pollution. 
The priestess is an apt pupil of Dr. Phillpotts who, when 
he was waging fierce war with the late Lord Grey, taught 
his children to pray morning and night for the lost Whig 
Earl. In the same spirit it is recorded of Lord Herbert 
of Cherbury that he always forgave his enemies because 
he had a persuasion that thereby God would punish them 
so much the more in the other world. 

In another respect Miss Sellon shows at whose feet she 
has been deriving her inspirations, not of the gentlest 
kind. 

The idea of a Sister of Mercy is associated with 
humility as much as with loving tenderness. In Miss 
Sellon's letters we only see that humility which pride 
apes, and a spiritual conceit the most overweening and 
arrogant. She makes lowly reverences ; but her heart is 



THE CHURCH. 321 



up, and she takes her place upon the pinnacle of High 
Church to look down with the pity not of mercy, but of 
pride, on all who stand beneath that saintly level. 

We have before now rendered an ungrudging tribute 
to the secular services this lady has rendered to society 
in succouring the sick. She has stooped to the lowly office 
of the nurse with the grace of charity : but let her not 
be seen to rise like Sextus with the keys of St. Peter in 
her hand. The pretension to infallibility ill assorts with 
the profession of meekness and humility. — (1850.) 

CLERICAL TUFT-HUNTING. 

A popular preacher at one of the newly-endowed 
churches of Belgravia, who is usually most extreme and 
damnatory in denouncing all aspirations after worldly 
honours and distinctions, surprised his hearers not a little 
last Sunday, by desiring their ' Prayers for a Nobleman 
of this congregation.' This aristocratic and exclusive 
announcement was the more singular (in both senses of 
the word) because it has rarely happened of late that 
there have not been several persons in the district who, 
unfortunately, required a similar intercession for Divine 
mercy. Either, therefore, there must have been a mar- 
vellously sudden cessation of disease in the neighbourhood, 
or we must come to the conclusion that our discriminating 
minister deviated in this instance from the principle so 
rigidly inculcated by him on ordinary occasions, of the 
equality of all men before the throne of God ; and con- 
sidered that plebeian invalids were no fit company, even 
in prayer, for a sick lord. There is, however, one pre- 
cedent, we believe, for this formula. A country curate, 

Y 



322 THE CHURCH. 



probably in the celebrated village of Bray, was called on 
to perform, in behalf of a matron of quality, that peculiar 
service of the church which is appointed for fair conva- 
lescents, just recovered from ' interesting situations.' But, 
fearing lest his titled and fashionable parishioner might 
be offended at being called or classed as a mere woman, 
he thus implored the Divine protection for her : ' Lord, 
save this Lady, thy servant ! ' to which the clerk, deter- 
mined not to be behindhand with his master in courtly 
phraseology, responded — ' Who putteth her Ladyship's 
trust in thee.'— (1847.) 



We fear that the distinguished (and distinguishing) 
preacher, to whose new form of invoking prayers for the 
sick we drew the attention of our readers last week, has 
not availed himself, to its full extent, of the precedent 
with which we had so much pleasure in furnishing him. 
We listened with anxious attention last Sunday to the 
Thanksgiving, on the conclusion of the morning service, 
in hopes that the parenthetical application [particularly 
to his lordship, who now desires, etc.,] would have in- 
formed us of the restoration to health of c the nobleman ' 
so emphatically prayed for on the preceding Sunday. In 
this hope we were disappointed ; nor, on the other hand, 
were our prayers again required, in the same form of 
specification, for his lordship ; so that we are to this 
moment in a state of painful suspense as to the result. 
Now, it is but natural that a congregation should feel 
more anxiety to know the success of their prayers when 
they have been bespoken — cut out to measure, as it were 



THE CHURCH. 323 



— for a particular and selected individual, than where the 
article is kept ready made, to be dealt out in the lump to 
the 01 XToXAo/'. Eeluctant, therefore, as we are to throw 
cold water on a system of classification and separation, 
which otherwise seems so peculiarly adapted to the spirit 
and simplicity of Protestant worship, and so admirably 
calculated to inculcate humility, at least in untitled sup- 
plicants ; still, we cannot shut our eyes to the inconsis- 
tency of thus individualising in sickness and generalising 
on recovery. So that, on the whole, we fear we must re- 
commend our discerning pastor to return to the vulgar 
form of praying for his sick sheep gregariously ; or, if he 
cannot reconcile it to his conscience to pen lord and com- 
moner in the same fold, at least to be consistent, and 
continue the separation to the end. If it be fit and proper 
that a nobleman be prayed for in solitary dignity and 
grandeur, it can scarcely be right that he should return 
thanks with the herd. Ill-natured people might imagine 
that the noble invalid wished for a monopoly in his own 
person of the advantages of prayer, but had no objection 
to let mere ordinary mortals share with him in the 
burthen of thanksgiving. — (1847.) 

THE EXCLUSIVE SYSTEM IN THE GRAVEYARD. 

The Bishops vehemently opposed the closing of the 
pestilential old graveyards, and, having happily failed in 
their endeavours to perpetuate those nuisances to the public 
health, they are now doing their best and their worst to 
obstruct the opening of new burial-grounds, according to 
the last Act of Parliament for the regulation of such 
places. For this purpose no pretext is too frivolous and 

t2 



324 THE CHURCH. 



childish. Of course our Phillpotts is first and foremost in 
this perverse opposition to a great improvement. 

At Torrington a burial-ground has been prepared, pro- 
perly fenced and enclosed; but the Bishop of Exeter 
refuses to consecrate the part appropriated to the members 
of the Established Church, because the side which borders 
on the ground of the Dissenters is open, so that there is 
no separation of brick and mortar, or of carpentry, between 
the last resting-place of the orthodox and the schismatic. 
The holy man insists on a railing at least, as a boundary 
line to prevent any confusion or unsuitable co-mingling. 
He would have the dead know their places, and observe 
the distinction between the communion of the Church 
and the Meeting-house. The solid and substantial pale of 
the Church, in Bishop Phillpotts's view, is a wooden paling. 
A railing is what he would, with a typical meaning, put 
between Churchmen and Dissenters. ' Let there,' he 
would say, • be nothing but railing between them during 
life, and a railing even after death. Let railing be the 
alpha and omega of their relations. Set up a railing,' he 
stipulates, ' and I will consent to consecrate the ground.' 

The holy man is fearful that his blessing might extend 
and stray beyond the designed bounds, if there be not 
some stout palings or rails to confine it to its due narrow 
limits. He would rather put a blessing in a pound than 
let it stray — blessing beyond intention. We wonder 
where Bishop Phillpotts's world spiritual commences ? 
Where does he get away from church walls and railings, 
if be ever does get away from such divisions ? Can he 
conceive that the bodies of Churchmen and Dissenters 
may lumber in peace, and turn to common dust, without 



THE CHURCH. 325 



some barrier of wood or stone between them ? Or does 
he believe that souls can never be in their right places 
without the help of the carpenter or the mason ? Must he 
stick to exclusion in the grave, and guard against mixed 
company like a master of the ceremonies for the church- 
yard ? Who knows but that he may have reserved seats 
for the favoured high Church, as he insists on a railing to 
set apart the despised Dissenters in their last resting- 
place.— (1856.) 



32G THE LAW. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE LAW. 



LEGAL MOKALITY. 

If falsehood were supposed to be an exhaustible body, 
nothing could be conceived more politic than the system 
of English law, which would in this case expend so many 
lies in its own forms and proceedings as to leave none 
for the use of rogues in evidence : but unfortunately such 
is not the moral philosophy ; and the witness who goes 
into one of our courts, the vital atmosphere of which is 
charged with fiction, is too likely to have his inward and 
latent mendacity provoked by the example. He sees, in 
the reputed sacred forms of justice, that the falsehood 
which is accounted convenient is not esteemed shameful ; 
and why, he considers, may not the individual man have 
his politic fictions as well as that abstraction of all 
possible human excellence, Justice? The end sanctions 
the means. We cannot touch pitch without defilement, 
and it is impossible that a people can be familiarised with 
falsehood, and reconciled to it on the pretence of its 
utility, without detriment to their morals. — (1827.) 



THE LAW. 327 



THE IMMORALITY OF SUGGESTING THE PLEA OF fc NOT GUILTY.' 

In glancing over the ' Morning Chronicle ' of Saturday, 
two reports happened to strike our eyes of curiously 
opposite tendencies. In the one the Duke of Wellington 
affirmed that the foundation of justice was truth : truth 
its means, truth its end. In the other, the trial of a gentle- 
man who, in the alarm of an attack on his house, had 
unfortunately fired a shot at random which killed a servant, 
the prisoner having pleaded guilty, the Judge (Mr. Justice 
Cresswell) advised him not to plead guilty until he had 
heard the punishment awaiting his crime of incaution ; and 
proceeded to explain what the sentence would be, leaving 
it thus to the prisoner's choice to plead guilty with a 
knowledge of the consequences, or to plead not guilty and 
to take the chances of the law. Now what was the moral 
character of the Judge's suggestion ? 

' The foundation, the means, the end of justice is truth,' 
says the Duke of Wellington. ' Stop,' says the Judge in 
effect to the prisoner, ' mind what you are about, don't tell 
the truth till you know what it will subject you to ; hear 
what the law is, and then take your choice of telling the 
truth and taking the punishment, or of telling a formal lie, 
which will give you the benefit of the uncertainties of the 
law, the chances of escaping justice.' 

Mr. Justice Cresswell, in this case, only did what other 
Judges have done before him ; the recommendation to 
withdraw the plea of guilty being very much the practice 
of the Bench : but what is a plea of guilty but the con- 
fession of the truth ? and is it decent for the very ministers 
of truth to suggest and recommend the suppression of it, 



328 THE LAW. 



and the substitution of a lie, which may have the conveni- 
ence of defeating justice ? We remember more than one 
case in which acquittals followed the retractation of the 
plea of guilty. The criminals, on the persuasion of the 
Judge, took the benefit of the lie and the uncertainties of 
the law, and escaped justice. To avoid such a scandal to 
morality, would it not be well to discontinue the practice 
of requiring the prisoner to plead guilty or not guilty, and, 
passing that form, to proceed at once to the evidence ? 

In the case tried by Mr. Justice Cresswell the prisoner 
persisted in his conscientious plea, and was found guilty 
of manslaughter and sentenced to three months' imprison- 
ment. As his offence was one purely of accident, the 
sentence must be regarded as a severe one, especially 
when compared with others of the same class and of a 
worse complexion ; but it is doubtless intended to serve 
as an example to those who prefer the truth to taking 
their chances in the lottery of justice. — (1842.) 



Lawyers abhor any short cut to the truth. The pur- 
suit is the thing for their pleasure and profit, and all their 
rules are framed for making the most of it. 

Crime is to them precisely what the fox is to the sports- 
man; and the object is not to pounce on it and capture 
it at once, but to have a good run for it, and to exhibit 
skill and address in the chase. Whether the culprit or 
the fox escape or not is a matter of indifference, the run 
being the main thing. 

The punishment of crime is as foreign to the object 
of lawyers as the extirpation of the fox is to that of 



THE LAW. 329 



sportsmen. The sportsman, because he hunts the fox, 
sees in the summary destruction of a fox by the hand of a 
clown an offence foul, strange, and unnatural, little short 
of murder. The lawyer treats crime in the same way. 
His business is the chase of it : but, in order that it may 
exist for the chase, he lays down rules protecting it 
against surprises and capture by any methods but 
those of the forensic field. 

One good turn deserves another, and, as the lawyer 
owes his business to crime, he naturally makes it his 
business to favour and spare it as much as possible. To 
seize and destroy it wherever it can be got at, seems to 
him as barbarous as shooting a bird sitting, or a hare in 
her form, does to the sportsman. The phrase, to give 
law for the allowance of a start, or any chance of escape, 
expresses the methods of lawyers in the pursuit of crime, 
and has doubtless been derived from their practice. 

Confession is a thing most hateful to law, for this stops its 
sport at the outset. It is the surrender of the fox to the 
hounds. ' We don't want your stinking body,' says the 
lawyer ; ' we want the run after the scent. Away with 
you, be off ; retract your admission, take the benefit of 
telling a lie, give us employment, and let us take our 
chance of hunting out, in our roundabout ways, the truth, 
which we will not take when it lies before us.' 

When a prisoner is examined before a magistrate, the 
first care of his worship is to caution the man to say 
nothing that may betray him, as if the great business of 
justice was to keep the truth from too prompt and dis- 
tinct a discovery. Police officers are looked coldly on, or 
rebuked, if they tender any confession, though not ex- 



330 THE LAW. 



torted, but yielded in the evidence of confusion of guilt, 
or in the despair of concealment. They profit by these 
lessons and become the protectors of criminals. — (1843.) 



We want a new Book of Beauty — not any encroachment 
on the imperial purple of Lady Blessington. The sort of 
volume we propose should be bound in the professional 
livery, calfskin, and it should be a collection of the 
Beauties of Law. 

The frontispiece should present Sheen cutting his 
child's head off, of which he was duly found not guilty, 
because of a variance between the baptismal names of 
the child and the names in the indictment. 

The Beauties of Law are inexhaustible ; we can hardly 
read an assize report without discovering some new speci- 
men. The fox who met with a handsome mask remarked 
that it was a fine face, but it was a pity it had no brains ; 
but this criticism does not apply to the Beauties of Law, 
which fill us with the greater admiration because they 
are so utterly void of reason. A true Beauty of Law 
takes your breath away by its stark antagonism to com- 
mon sense. The Judges are the black Graces who wait 
upon the Beauties of Law ; it is their delight to set them 
forth in all their charms. Venus herself had not a more 
unsubstantial frothy origin than the Beauties of Law ; 
but the froth of which Venus came had some salt in it, 
of which the Beauties of Law are quite clear, though 
they seldom fail to put poor Justice in a sad pickle. 

We should much like to see some tableaux vivants of 
the Beauties of Law exhibiting their charms in opposi- 



THE LAW. 331 



tion to the stern harsh features of Justice. The omni- 
potence of beauty is a hackneyed theme, excepting in 
the province of Law, in which it has not sufficiently been 
observed that there is not a crime that man can commit 
that some Beauty of Law cannot cover with its impunity. 

In the ' Times ' of Tuesday we met with a Beauty of 
Law that has thrown us into a fit of admiration. It is 
not a beauty of the highest caste : it is not a beauty that 
puts a face of innocence on murder : but in a humbler 
way it is prodigious, nevertheless. 

A man breaks the bones of his wife's nose, and strikes 
her on the head till she becomes insensible and remains 
so for two days, the woman at the time being in a state 
of pregnancy. He is indicted for an assault with intent 
to do grievous bodily harm. Now comes a Beauty of 
Law to the rescue : 

' Mr. O'Brien, at the close of the case, submitted that 
the count imputing a felonious intent could not be sup- 
ported, as there was no proof of any weapon or instru- 
ment having been made use of. 

'The Common Serjeant said, that this had no doubt 
been ruled by the Judges, and if the jury thought there 
was no evidence of any instrument having been made 
use of, the prisoner could only be convicted of a common 
assault. 

'The jury found the prisoner guilty of a common 
assault.' 

So that a powerful man with a fist like a sledge-hammer 
may break bones, and knock about a skull till insensibility 
is produced, and in the blind eye of the law it is but a 
common assault, and not an assault with intent to do 



332 THE LAW. 



grievous bodily harm, though grievous bodily harm has 
been done, because, forsooth, an instrument has not been 
used. The felonious intent is to be inferred from the 
means, not from the actual effect ! But one powerful 
brute with his fist will do more grievous bodily harm 
than a puny one with a poker. A man's strength dis- 
penses with the recourse to an instrument to give effect 
to his malice, and therefore the law rules that he has not 
intended grievous bodily harm, but simply a common 
assault. The fact is. however, that a man using an instru- 
ment may often commit injuries beyond his intention, 
which is not so likely to be the case with one pounding 
with his naked fists. 

We wish the Judges who ruled the point could cor- 
poreally be subjected to the experiment, whether a 
vigorous pair of fists could be so employed as to effect 
a bodily harm as grievous as that producible by an 
instrument. A trial of this sort in banco, an able-bodied 
boxer pummelling their learned lordships, would be 
extremely satisfactory; and the result would probably 
be an amendment of the decision that an instrument is 
essential to an assault for grievous bodily harm, and the 
conviction that intent should be inferred from the fact 
rather than the means. — (1847.) 



Lawyers are not worse moralists than other men, except 
in their courts, where they evince a marvellous moral in- 
sensibility, or, perhaps we should rather say, immoral 
insensibility. It seems, indeed, as if their minds were so 
narrowed to the legal view of what is before them, that 



THE LAW. 333 



the moral bearings were altogether unobserved by them. 
Thus we constantly see the most villainous lines of defence 
escaping any expression of reprobation, or, what is worse 
still, noticed with a gentle disapproval, treating an atro- 
cious wickedness as an indiscretion or impropriety. In a 
farce, upon a charge of enormous profligacy against a 
gallant, a lady cries, ' Oh fie ! you naughty man ; ' and in 
a farce very often played in our Courts of Justice, we 
hear this ' Oh fie ' repeated, as unsuitably as would be its 
application to the act of cutting a throat. — (1850.) 



Law has been likened very often to a polypus, whose 
arms and suckers are not separated easily from any object 
that once suffers its embrace. But the Greeks had an 
older legend about the polypus, which said that, to what- 
ever block or stone or other object such an animal should 
once attach itself, it would gradually transform into exact 
similarity therewith as to colour and substance, remaining 
thenceforward a polypus only in form. We fancy that 
transformations of this kind take place also with the 
polypus of Law. It must have grasped dishonesty till its 
form only is left, for its original substance is often quite 
impossible of detection. 

There appears to have been established an entente cor- 
diale between justice and crime, extremely pleasant to a 
section of the judges ; the bonhomie permitted by such 
an advanced state of civilisation in our Law courts being 
a much happier counteraction to the effects of a sedentary 
occupation than any habit of saying and looking severe 
things could possibly be. — (1851.) 



334 THE LAW. 



PRIVILEGES OF COUNSEL. 1 

For the honour or for the dishonour of the profession 
of the Law it should be known whether Mr. Phillips's 
speech in defence of Courvoisier, after the murderer had 
confessed his guilt to hirn, does or does not exceed the 
bounds of an advocate's license. It would be unjust to 
present it as an example of professional morality; the 
question is, whether it is, or is not, accordant with pro- 
fessional morality. 

To the report of the ' Times ' a remark is appended, in 
which it is presumed that the confession 

fc Entirely changed the line of defence intended to be 
taken by his counsel ; for it was generally rumoured that 
a severe attack would be made on the fellow-servants of 
the prisoner, and also on the police who were engaged in 
the investigation. ' 

The intended line of defence (query, lie of defence ?) 
was not changed by the communication in the two points 
mentioned. The cruellest insinuations were thrown out 
against the witness Sarah Mancer, and the foulest charges 
advanced against the police. 

1 In this case Courvoisier, a Swiss valet, had been tried for the murder 
of his master, Lord William Russell. His counsel having- solemnly declared 
his belief in his client's innocence, and even thrown suspicion upon others, 
while he had the man's written confession of guilt in his possession, the 
'Examiner' originated a discussion upon the limits of the privileges of counsel, 
which was warmly taken up by the bar. Writing to Mr. Forster on the sub- 
ject, Mr. Fonblanque says : ' Is Mr. P.'s conduct of Courvoisier's defence in 
accordance with professional rules, and if so, is the standard of professional 
conduct accordant with morality ? Put more tersely, is Mr. P. a disgrace 
to the bar, or is the license of the bar a disgrace to the morality of the 
country ? ' — (Ed.) 



THE LAW. 335 



Mr. P. disclaimed the intention to criminate the female 
servants. No, forsooth ! 

' God forbid that any breath of his should send tainted 
into the world persons perhaps depending for their sub- 
sistence upon their character. It was not his duty, nor 
his interest, nor his policy to do so.' 

But did he or did he not make the attempt in this 
passage ? — 

' The prisoner had seen his master retire to his peaceful 
bed, and was alarmed in the morning by the housemaid, 
who was up before him, with a cry of robbery, and some 
dark, mysterious suggestion of murder. " Let us go," 
said she, " and see where my Lord is." He did confess 
that that expression struck him as extraordinary. If she 
had said, " Let us go and tell my Lord that the house is 
plundered," that would have been natural; but why 
should she suspect that anything had happened to his 
Lordship ? She saw her fellow-servant safe, no taint of 
blood about the house, and where did she expect to find her 
nmster? Why in his bed-room, to be sure. What was 
there to lead to a suspicion that he was hurt ? Courvoisier 
was safe, the cook was safe, and why should she suspect 
that her master was not safe too ? ' 

Here, too, was a direct attempt to shake the credit of 
the woman's evidence, and to induce the jury to believe 
that she had perjured herself. 

Then, as to the police, does it appear that Mr. P's. line of 
defence was altered in these attacks, the groundlessness 
of which he knew as well as his client's guilt? The 
witness Pearce is thus dealt with : — 

; " Look here, Sir," said he to Courvoisier, " dare you 



336 THE LAW. 



look me in the face ? " Merciful God ! was there any 
exhibition on earth so likely to strike him dumb with 
horror as the proofs of the murder lying before him, and 
that miscreant challenging him to look him in the face ? 
He did look him in the face, and answered him, " I see 
them, I know nothing about them ; my conscience is 
clear, I am innocent." ' The learned counsel animadverted 
in very strong terms upon the testimony of this witness, 
charging him with an attempt to intimidate the prisoner, 
and thereby to extort from him a confession of the 
murder. He also condemned the conduct of Mr. Mayne 
and Mr. Hobler in permitting Pearce to hold that inter- 
view with the prisoner. ' Such treatment was worthy only 
of the Inquisition. Yet the fellow who did all this told 
the Jury he expected to share in the plunder — the £450 
reward — which was to be divided over the coffin of 
Courvoisier! He had hoped the days of blood-money 
were past.' 

Mr. P., when he uttered this tirade, knew that Pearce 
was right in fact, though not perhaps in form ; that he 
had confronted the murderer and dared him to deny 
his guilt : but Pearce is ' the miscreant,' and Courvoisier 
the injured innocent. # 

The attack upon Baldwin is still more unjustifiable ; and 
it is accompanied with a general charge of conspiracy 
against the prisoner, of whose guilt the speaker was 
cognisant : — 

1 Next came Baldwin, who had done his best in the 
work of conspiracy to earn the wages of blood. He 
swore well and to the purpose — he did all he could to 
senda fellow- creature "unhouseled, unanointed, unaneled" 



THE LAW. 337 



before his God. That man equivocated and shuffled, and 
lied on his oath as long as he could, pretending never to 
have heard of the reward because he was no scholar, 
although every wall in London was blazoned with it.' 

Next the character of Mrs. Piolaine was to be defamed, 
in order to procure the acquittal of the murderer. 

; He (Mr. P.) hoped the Jury knew something of 
Leicester Place. If they did they knew the character of 
this hotel, with a billiard-room attached to it, wdiere, 
unlike at a respectable hotel, any stranger, not being a 
guest, might enter and gamble.' 

All these imputations, of different degrees of blackness, 
were flung out by Mr. P., in the hope of obtaining, 
by them, the acquittal of a man whom he knew to be a 
murderer of the blackest dye. 

In the ' Times ' report we find this emphatic assertion : 
' The omniscient God alone knew who did this crime.' 

This was said by the man who himself knew who did 
the crime, and who profaned the name of the Deity by 
thrusting it into a solemn assertion, of the untruth of 
of which he was cognisant. 

Whether all this accords or not with professional 
morality, it is not for us to decide ; but, if it does, the 
public will probably be disposed to think that the pro- 
fession should change its name from the profession of the 
Law to the profession of the Lie. 

We should like to know the breadth of the distinction 
between an accomplice after the fact and an advocate 
who makes the most unscrupulous endeavours to pro- 
cure the acquittal of a man whom he knows to be an 
assassin. — (1840.) 



338 THE LAW. 



Quite bad enough was Mr. P's. defence as it was ; yet, 
though condemned by the right sense of the public, 
it has had its advocates. In the most ingenious argument 
we have seen in vindication of it, the counsel is said to 
represent the prisoner, with the advantages of the know- 
ledge of the law, and skill in sifting evidence and giving 
due significance to facts ; and it is therefore contended 
that it is the counsel's duty to act for the prisoner as the 
prisoner would act for himself if he had his advocate's 
skill. Admitting this position, it does not thence follow 
that it is the duty of the advocate to have recourse to 
falsehood in defence of his client ; for the principle stated 
would only clothe the advocate with the rights and duties 
of the prisoner, and it cannot be the duty of the prisoner 
to lie even for his own defence. Society cannot prevent his 
lying ; the law must allow of his lying ; it must yield him 
the opportunity of lying, if he chooses to lie : but the 
impossibility of preventing the he and the opportunity 
of the lie do not render the lie a right or a duty. How, 
then, can it be contended that the advocate, knowing 
his client's guilt and the circumstances of it, has a 
duty to uphold falsehood which does not belong to his 
client ? 

We admit that there are grave objections to throwing 
up a brief. Cases, not probable but possible, may be 
imagined, in which a destroying weight of prejudice 
might be thrown upon an innocent client by such a step. 
A counsel might be moved by ill-will or corruption to 
ruin a prisoner by throwing up his brief, and thereby 
implying that he had discovered the guilt of his client. 



THE LAW. 339 



An advocate might therefore feel bound by rule, even 
after a confession of guilt had been communicated to him, 
to go through with a defence : but in this case we contend 
that the advocate should scrupulously refrain from any 
line of defence, the effect of which would be to procure 
the acquittal of his client by criminating or destroying 
the characters of persons who had but borne true 
evidence against him. The defence should turn, in such 
case, on the sufficiency of the proof and on technical 
points, and not on the impugnment of honest evidence, 
or (worse still) on insinuations of guilt against the 
witnesses. The truth known to the advocate, through the 
confession, gives him the key to other truths, and clears 
evidence of suspicion which might have attached to it 
in his view, before the knowledge of his client's guilt 
gave the right reading of circumstances. 

Our objections to Mr. P.'s defence have applied to 
the points in which he became the assailant or accuser 
of witnesses whose truth he had no reason to suspect 
after Courvoisier's confession, and also to his solemn 
pretences of the murderer's innocence. Had he procured 
the acquittal of the guilty by this course, and transferred 
suspicion to the innocent, and placed them en their trial, 
the morality of his conduct would have been brought to 
a practical test. To judge of the attempt, imagine the 
success of it. Had he confined himself to weighing the 
sufficiency of evidence, and examining flaws in its links, 
he would at least have avoided wrong and danger to 
others in the defence of an assassin. 

The policy of Mr. P.'s course we question as much 
as its morality ; for jurors, having seen, in this example, 

z 2 



340 THE LAW. 



the extremities to which his zeal for a client of whose 
guilt he is cognisant will carry him, will in all other 
instances be apt to suppose that he is pleading against 
his knowledge of the truths of the case. — (1840.) 



We have been told, on high authority, that the advocate 
belongs, body and soul, to his client ; that he is bound to 
make truth appear untruth, and untruth appear truth ; 
that to procure the acquittal of his client, with a know- 
ledge of his guilt, he is free to criminate the innocent, or 
in plain familiar phrase, that he is to stick at nothing to 
obtain a verdict qiwcunque mo do. And we have wit- 
nessed fine examples in conformity with these doctrines, 
to which, as by-gones should be by-gones, we will not 
now more particularly allude. It was but the other day, 
however, that a most tender and touching sight was pre- 
sented in Lord Carlisle's Court of Inquiry — Mr. Serjeant 
Wilkins weeping for Mr. Eamshay, his learned bewigged 
head bent to the table ' like a lily borne down by the 
hail.' Perhaps, prosaically, it was more like a cauliflower 
on a block, but let that pass. What we have to consider 
is the zeal, or the fee-compelling-force, which can bow a 
wiggcd head to the table, and make the eyes overflow 
with tears such as either genuine pity, or genuine onion, 
elicits — tears such as learned Serjeants shed. The eye 
that so weeps, however, must have seen a fee. An unfeed 
eye would on a similar occasion be as unmoved as a 
stone. The fee and the feelings go together ; the word 
feeling, in legal diction, being derived from fee. What 
the precise charge for weeping is we do not pretend to 



THE LAW. 341 



know ; nor whether it is set down in the brief as an extra, 
like consultation, or a refresher : but of late years we 
have had several exhibitions of this black grace. Chitty 
wept for Thurtell, and Fitzroy Kelly for Taw ell, and 
lastly, Wilkins for Eamshay. Sweet sensibility ! says the 
tender-hearted reader ; but how is it that this same sen- 
sibility of the learned is so capricious, and that the same 
wigged man, who blubbers over one client so affectingly, 
will throw another overboard without a hesitation or a 
scruple ? Why make fish of one and flesh of another ? 
Why so strain the duty of advocate and client in some 
show cases, and loosen it in others, as we see in this 
example ? 

The complaisant husband who had napped during 
Csesar's visits, on finding that the same somnolency was 
expected from him by another gallant, said, ' I do not 
slumber for everybody.' Mr. Serjeant Wilkins does not 
sob for everybody ; but in common fairness and honesty 
he is bound to explain the rules of his service or dis- 
service to his clients, specifying for which of them he goes 
through thick and thin, and which he throws overboard. 
—(1851.) 

INEQUALITY IX PUNISHMENTS. 

Truly sings the old poet — 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage. 

With the appliances of all comforts and luxuries, a rich 
man may divest his residence in the Queen's Bench of all 
the harsher characteristics of a prison. He is less a pri- 
soner than a Governor-General on his voyage to India, 
and he has more resources for his entertainment, and 



342 TEE LAW. 



more society. And such was the rigour of justice in the 
case of Lord W. 1 

To the affluent nobleman six months' confinement was 
at worst but six months' privation of certain enjoyments ; 
it took nothing from his property ; it left him in condition 
as it found him. Not so nine months' imprisonment to the 
poor man, which is the amercement of nine months' in- 
dustry and its fruits. How enormous would seem a fine 
of £9,000 on a nobleman having £12,000 a-year ; and 
yet, practically, nine months' imprisonment, which is the 
loss of the earnings of nine months' industry to the poor 
man, is a far heavier sentence, for the labourer's estate is 
his industry, the wages of it his income. These are 
truisms, but they are truisms strangely disregarded by 
Justices who in so off-handed a style pass crushing sen- 
tences on the poor. In meting out imprisonment to the 
labouring- classes, magistrates seldom appear to advert to 
the injury which it does to the condition of the prisoners, 
besides the personal suffering. With a sentence of im- 
prisonment judges will fine a rich man perhaps in the 
proportion of a fiftieth part of his income ; but they do 
not remark that, in every sentence of imprisonment on a 
poor man who lives by his industry, they amerce him to 
the extent of the earnings lost to him through his con- 
finement ; and that six months' imprisonment is equivalent 
to half-a-year's income, besides the personal sufferings, 
and the impediment to future employment which is the 
probable consequence of having been in gaol. 

Circumspect and equal justice would reverse the rule 

1 Sentenced to six months' imprisonment for a violent assault on the 
police. — (Ed.) 



THE LAW. 343 



now observable in the punishment of rich and poor by 
imprisonment, and would deal out for parallel offences 
far larger terms of incarceration to persons in affluent or 
easy circumstances than to the labouring poor. — (1841.) 



For stealing a penny from a letter the carrier is trans- 
ported for life. For the Exchequer Bill fraud Mr. B. 
Smith is transported for life. Things that are equal to 
the same thing are equal to each other ; therefore the 
Exchequer Bill fraud and the robbery of the penny are, 
in the eye of the law, equal. Here the foot-rule fits both 
to a hair : but it is quite at fault when applied to the theft 
of the sovereign with the seven years' transportation. 
The lesson to carriers, according to Lord Denman, seems 
to be, that if they have set their minds on stealing they 
should take care to steal gold at least. A little stealing 
is a dangerous thing. Steal much, or filch not. — (1841). 



There appeared in the daily papers of last week the 
account of an indecent assault on a poor girl, followed 
by an attempt at violation. The parties accused were 
two gentlemen of fortune ; both were alleged to have 
committed an indecent assault, and the one who pro- 
ceeded afterwards to the criminal attempt threatened 
with violence a man who interfered to save the woman. 
The person charged with the minor offence has written 
to one of the morning papers, denying the truth of the 
statement, both as to the character of the outrage and the 



344 THE LAW. 



defence, but there has been no contradiction as to the 
more serious case, which, intoxication having been pleaded, 
the magistrates (Mr. G. Baillie of Hanwell, and the Eev. 
Dr. Walmsley) disposed of summarily with the sentence 
of a fine of £5, or two months' imprisonment ! 

If the plea of intoxication is to be admitted in ex- 
tenuation of a criminal act, a man who is inclined to any 
outrage has only to qualify himself by drunkenness for 
attempting it with comparative impunity. 

But suppose that the condition of the parties had been 
reversed, and that, instead of a poor girl, a nobleman's 
daughter, who had chanced to fall in the way of a 
ruffianly costermonger, had been so indecently assaulted 
by him, will anyone believe that the two magistrates 
would have admitted the excuse of intoxication, and let 
the fellow off for a fine of five shillings ? And such a 
small penalty would to very poor men be heavier than 
£o to a person in the condition of the prisoner in the 
present case. 

What a farce, what an impudent mockery of justice, 
was the pretended alternative of the fine of £5 or two 
months' imprisonment, as if the magistrates had not 
known perfectly well that the gentleman would pay 
the penalty without the slightest inconvenience. The 
sentence only marks what the punishment would have 
been if the offender had been poor ; in which case he 
would, in default of the money, have been sent to gaol 
for the term mentioned. 

Men who can afford to throw away £5 for their 
pleasures may see in this example that for so moderate a 
sum they may offer the grossest of insults, and threaten 



THE LAW. 345 



with the worst of injuries a girl in humble life, polluting 
her mind by the very attempt, to say nothing of the less 
grievance of the brutal violence to her person. But wrongs 
to the poor are not so thought of by worshipful justices. 

When we see the treatment of the poor, nothing ap- 
pears to us so wonderful as the existence of virtue 
amongst them. All the virtues the most difficult in their 
circumstances, exposed to temptation, are required and 
expected of them, while protection to the barriers of 
them is scornfully refused. To a gentleman how hor- 
rible would be the idea of his daughter struggling in the 
arms of a ruffian for half an hour .; but make the case that 
of a poor girl whose virtue is her all, and magistrates see 
in it only a trifle, like riding on the footpath or wrenching 
off knockers, sufficiently punished with a petty fine of 
£5 ! From this example profligates may learn that at- 
tempts at violation are more economical than seduction ; 
for, if they do not succeed in a transportable offence, they 
have only to say that they were drunk ; and, drunkenness 
covering a multitude of sins in the eyes of our sapient 
Justices, they escape with the fine of a sum that they 
would throw away for a trinket or any nonsense that 
might serve for their momentary amusement. — (1843.) 



Wiiex poor men escape a conviction, do we ever find 
judges rejoicing at it because of the situation of humble 
dependence in which they were placed ? No, the rejoic- 
ing is at the escape of the rich and independent — or the 
respectable, to use the much-abused word — and not at 
the escape of the poor and lowly, whose bread depends 



346 THE LAW. 



on their characters, and who, branded by Justice, are 
doomed for ever either to ruin or to crime. 

Whether a poor man escapes or not, a harsh or hasty 
sentence is never treated as a matter of any sort of im- 
portance by the Bench : but great and loud is the expres- 
sion of joy when the rich escape with a mild judgment. 
—(1839.) 

THE LAW OF TKEASON. 

The law of treason is intended to throw the greatest 
degree of protection round the person of the Sovereign, as 
the person of the Sovereign is most exposed to danger : 
but is it not now certain that the law of treason protects 
the Sovereign less than the ordinary criminal law protects 
the meanest of her subjects? A prisoner arraigned for 
treason has a better chance of escape than any other 
offender under trial. And all the procedure flatters the 
diseased appetite for eclat and notoriety which prompted 
Oxford's attempt, and has probably also been one of the 
motives of Francis; 1 messengers hurrying hither and thither 
in search of Ministers, and the pomp and circumstance 
of examination before the Privy Council, instead of the 
quiet undramatic course of an examination in the nearest 
dingy police-office before the sort of magistrate who is the 
habitual terror of the sort of prisoner. All this is feeding 
the very excitement which makes the crime. Let there 
be no Privy Council theatre for the heroics. Ambitious 
crimes should not be met with State pageants reflecting 

1 This refers to an alleged attack upon the Queen's life by a young man 
named John Francis, who, on August 30, 1842, fired a pistol at her on 
Constitution Hill — the identical spot upon which a mau named Oxford had 
made a similar attempt upon her life the year before. — (Ed.) 



THE LAW. 347 



a dignity on them, but dragged down to the handling of 
justice in its ordinary, plain, e very-day course. Above 
all, let there be no flinching from the discovery of the fact, 
whatever it may be ; no evasion of the truth, no false 
pretext to compass impunity ; for these things are of the 
most pernicious and dangerous example. If there has 
been crime, let such a measure of punishment await it as 
the feelings of society will sanction. We deprecate equally 
severity and impunity : but we know that there is now much 
more danger of the latter than of the former. — (1842.) 



If Francis 1 had been sentenced at once to transportation 
for life to Norfolk Island, with hard labour, the severity 
of the punishment would have stood prominently out to 
view : but, as it is, what is escaped strikes the mind, in- 
stead of what is to be undergone ; and the thought is 
that Francis is not hanged, not that he has to suffer a life 
of toil and misery in perpetual exile. This is, however, 
an evil belonging to the law for which those charged with 
the superintendence of justice are not to be blamed, as 
they can only deal with the law as they find it, and of the 
two evils they must rather take those of the commutation 
of punishment than of a severity shocking to the feelings of 
society. The purpose of the law of treason is the desirable 
one of throwing the greatest degree of protection around 
the person of the Sovereign ; but, just in proportion as the 
law of treason is increased in severity for this end, it fails 
to serve to it ; and, then, with the mitigation of it, there 
comes in an appearance of leniency most inconsistent with 

1 This man's sentence of death was, at the instance of the Queen herself, 
commuted to tansportation for life. — (En.) 



348 THE LAW. 



the policy of justice, and liable to very dangerous inter- 
pretations. 

We much question the prudence of allotting to attempts 
against the life of the Sovereign the same measure of 
punishment as against the completion of the crime. It 
seems to us wise to hold open the locus penitentice short 
of murder ; for, in the very act of violence, a feeling of 
compunction, or the fear of incurring the last penalty, 
may stay the hand, or turn it from its deadly aim. On 
the other side, it is surely most impolitic to make a man, 
who has entered upon a treasonable attempt, apprehend 
that his punishment will be equally great whether he 
completes it or stops short of the last degree of guilt. 
The law of treason refuses this discrimination ; and, as we 
see, where it so refuses to discriminate, it ceases to be ap- 
plicable and operative, and then it has the mischief of all 
nominal punishments. 

The diseased passion for notoriety, which is one of the 
motives of the attacks on the Queen, requires some counter 
discipline of a humiliating and degrading kind in the pun- 
ishment. The procedure and law at present all flatter the 
craving for eclat, which it would be politic to balk. With 
this view, it has been suggested that the punishment of 
transportation, for the class of crimes in question, should 
be preceded by a public whipping, which would probably 
have the effect of curing the propensity to treason heroics. 
—(1842.) 

THE MODEL JUDGE. 

A tiiixg may be too good to be understood. Excel- 
lence may be rejected because of mistaken notions of 
what constitutes it. People have had an erroneous notion 



THE LAW. 349 



of what a Judge should be 3 and they have cried out 
against Lord Abinger because he differed from their false 
standard ; but now they learn from Ministerial authorities 
in the House of Commons that Lord Abinger is the very 
pattern of a Judge, and that all that he did on the Special 
Commission which was thought wrong was deserving of 
the highest praise. 

The herald-painter, who had been painting lions in all 
sorts of attitudes all his life, went at last to the Tower to 
see the beasts whose figures he had been so busy about. 
When they were exhibited to him he peremptorily denied 
that they were lions, or anything resembling lions, and 
c 1 should know what lions are,' said he, ' for I have been 
painting lions all the days of my life, and these creatures 
are not in the slightest degree like the lions I have painted.' 

So we have now blazoned before us, in Ministerial 
speeches, the form and figure of the best of Judges 
rampant : but it brings us only to a perplexity like that of 
the herald-painter, for when we go to Westminster Hall 
we find the Judges there not in the slightest degree like 
the pattern Judge before us, and the question is whether 
they are Judges at all. — (1843.) 

NOT THE FIRST OF MEN. 

Voltaire having to introduce a very mediocre person, 
bearing the name of the father of the human race, an- 
nounced him as ' M. Adam, but not the first of men.' The 
chairman of the Middlesex Sessions is a cadet of the same 
family ; and unfortunately, for want of a Voltaire to teach 
him better, he has lived under the firm impression that 
he is the first of men, and with this preposterous notion 



350 THE LAW. 



has played a long series of pranks of authority, which 
must have kept the angels, who are silly enough to weep 
at such exhibitions, in a pitiably tearful state for many a 
clay. It was a marvel to the Duchess de Maine that no 
one was ever right but herself : that no one is ever right 
but Mr. Serjeant Adams is no wonder to Mr. Serjeant 
Adams however, but a fact which he does not suffer to be 
disputed or doubted. He sits upon the bench as a Jove, 
the Jove of Midas in his chair, whose word, though 
absurd, must be law, and he launches mock sentence like 
a squib thunderbolt at contumacious prisoners, and snubs 
juries, rates counsel, lectures the Press, instructs the Legis- 
lature, and guides the public mind. How anything can 
go wrong in the world while there is a Serjeant Adams 
to put everything right, must be a matter of inexhaust- 
ible wonderment to himself at least. He is Fontaine's 
fly on the chariot wheel, ordering all, everlastingly 
sounding his tiny trumpet, and signalising the powers of 
his insect sting. The embodiment of an impertinence 
and ofliciousness so vast in a being so small is a curiosity 
in its way. — (1853.) 

THE COMFORTING COMPAEISON FOR CRIMINALS. 

It is the habit of some of our judges, in passing sentence 
for crimes the penalty of which has been mitigated, to 
draw a comparison between the punishment which the 
offender would have suffered under the old law and the 
milder one which lie lias to undergo, and to instruct him 
how fortunate he ought to think himself for having been 
cast upon these times of improved humanity. We must 
doubt the fitness of this congratulation, for such in effect 



THE LAW. 351 



it is, and it is remarkable that the occasion for it is almost 
uniformly some extraordinarily atrocious case. 

An evil which necessarily attends mitigation of punish- 
ment is the comparison between the graver penalty 
abolished, and the milder one substituted, which makes 
the latter wear an appearance of relative lightness, or of 
an escape. The terror of the past punishment divests 
the new punishment of all awe, so long as the two are 
immediate objects of comparison. The milder penalty 
only begins to make itself feared in full force when 
the graver one it has superseded has passed into the 
limbo of the obsolete. This is a disadvantage insepa- 
rable from changes in the criminal law in the direction 
of mitigation ; but why do some of the judges take 
pains to aggravate an evil which to some extent is 
unavoidable ? Why admonish a miscreant in the dock 
that, if he had committed the same atrocity a short 
time ago, he would have been hanged instead of trans- 
ported? What is the reflection in the villain's mind, 
but that he is a very lucky fellow to have timed his guilt 
so conveniently for his neck ? And, instead of picturing 
to himself the pains of exile, his imagination dwells with 
complacency on the escape from the gallows, and he com- 
forts himself, at the judge's suggestion, with the thought 
how much worse the thing might have been, and how 
happy he should think himself it is no worse. Now does 
this sort of lesson square with the policy of justice? Is 
the deterring example assisted by sending a convict from 
the dock, to the utmost possible degree contented and 
reconciled to his punishment ? 

In the condemned cell what is the effect of a commuta- 



352 THE LAW. 



tion of punishment from the capital to the secondary? 
The convict is in an ecstasy of joy. What cares he, what 
thinks he of transportation ? Not a jot ; his mind is full 
of what he has escaped, to the utter exclusion of any 
thought of what he has to suffer, which seems a grace in 
the comparison. 

The same comparison, with the same result in a less 
degree, takes place in the mind of the prisoner at the 
bar before whose imagination the judge has placed the 
past terrors of the gallows, with the effect of shutting 
out of view, or at least of much diminishing, the present 
awe of transportation. 

Boniface makes his guest's mouth water with the report 
of the dainties he would have regaled on if he had arrived 
at this or that earlier day. The judges we have in view, 
reversing this tantalising practice, tell the criminal how 
they would have hanged him if he had fallen into their 
hands a little earlier. The scoundrel thanks them for 
nothing, and blesses his stars that things have chanced as 
they have done. 

Would it not be better to avoid all reference to past 
severities, and to pass at once to the contemplation of the 
pains and ills of the present allotted punishment, un- 
relieved with any darker foil ? 

If it be the policy of judges to make light of existing 
punishments, undeniably they act consistently in com- 
paring them with the severer penalty superseded ; but, if 
it be the contrary policy to give all awe to secondary 
punishments, they should be presented apart with their 
own peculiar forms of terror, and without any reference 
to that favourite standard, the gallows, which, once intro- 



TEE LAW. 35 



■JO 



duced, dwarfs, in the vulgar mind, to insignificance the 
awe of all other penalties. — (1858.) 

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 

We foresee that Lord Brougham and Vaux will be a 
prodigious favourite w r ith the Church. His observation 
that there was nothing in the Bible prohibitory of the 
punishment of death for other crimes than murder, 
reminds us of the reason which the Newgate Ordinary, 
in Jonathan Wild, gives for his choice of punch, that it 
is a liquor nowhere spoken ill of in Scripture. — (1827.) 



A common effect of the severity of the Law is, to turn 
the humanity of society to the account of criminals, 
and to habituate men in the discharge of a most 
solemn duty to the violation of truth. In trying a pri- 
soner, regard is generally had to the nature of the punish- 
ment awaiting him, before inquiry is directed to the truth 
of the charge, and belief or disbelief of the evidence is 
proportioned to the probable character of the sentence. — 
(1827.) 



Opinions differ as to the punishment of death even 
for murder ; but all must agree that, if the punishment be 
continued at all, it should be carried into effect in the 
worst cases of murder : but we have seen it, apparently 
by some inexplicable caprice, remitted in some cases of a 
remarkably black nature, and enforced in others of a less 
barbarous complexion. For instance, no less than three 

A A 



354 THE LAW. 



men lately suffered death for the murder of a poor old 
pensioner near Hertford, whom they had killed, without 
the intention to kill him, by blows in the act of robbing 
him. A correspondent of the ' Chronicle ' reminds us of 
another remarkable case of a butcher's boy who poisoned 
his mistress and obtained a pardon. 

It has certainly appeared to us that the prerogative 
of mercy has been marvellously ill-directed in certain 
very conspicuous instances, under the present Administra- 
tion ; but the great fault is in giving to a Minister so 
occupied as the Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
ment a duty, the due performance of which would oc- 
cupy the whole time and care of a highly-skilled judicial 
functionary. What is termed the mercy of the Crown, 
when properly exercised, is essentially justice, a justice 
which the law would miscarry of in the special case ; and 
the application of it should be a strictly judicial function, 
entrusted to a minister responsible for its prudent ex- 
ercise, and responsible for it alone. — (1839.) 



It is of the last importance that there should be no 
mistake about the meaning of verdicts. 1 It is of the last 
importance that recommendations to mercy, proceeding 
from either doubts of the law or abhorrence of the 
punishment of death, should not be attributed by the 

1 This refers to the trial of the Chartists for treason ; the argument of 
the ' Examiner' having gone to"prove that under the Treason Law juries were 
more perplexed than in ordinary criminal cases, and that it would tend to 
prevent a miscarriage of justice if these men were charged not with treason 
but with riot with attempt to murder. — (En.) 



THE LAW. 355 



criminally-disposed to any feeling of indulgence for the 
crimes committed. 

It may be wise to spare the blood of the bloodthirsty : 
but the reason for sparing their blood should distinctly 
appear, and it should be clear that the remission of the 
extreme penalty is not referable to any indulgent view of 
the great crime attempted. 

We have always been adverse to the punishment of 
death, and never were we more hostile to it than at this 
moment, when it stands between justice and crime, 
making the one irresolute, and consequently emboldening 
the other. The punishment of death, repugnant as it 
is to the community, is becoming virtually a nominal 
punishment : but, as we have often argued, as a nominal 
punishment, it has the pernicious effect of masking the 
real secondary punishment, and depriving it of the terrors 
which should belong to it ; the escape from the sentence 
of death being what strikes the minds of the multitude, 
and not the infliction of the minor penalty, of which 
nothing is known. Further, when to the greatest crimes 
the secondary punishment is awarded, the common notion 
is too likely to be, not that the greatest penalty is too 
severe or too cruel for the greatest crimes, but that the 
offences which have been treated in arraignment as the 
greatest are really of a secondary criminality. — (1840.) 



It would be better, we repeat, to abolish the capital 
punishments than to enforce or remit them so capriciously. 
That the time will come for the abolition of them, we 
have no more doubt than of the steady progress of 

A A 2 



356 THE LAW. 



society; and the preparative for the desirable consummation 
is the reservation of the punishment for the worst class 
of cases, and to them strictly and solely. But for this 
purpose an improvement in the law is necessary, which, 
as Lord John Eussell observes, confounds, under the 
description of murder, offences very different in nature 
and dye of guilt.— (1840.) 



Lord John Eussell argues that, before the Legislature 
abolishes capital punishments in cases in which it is but 
nominal, it is bound to take care to improve the system 
of secondary punishments ; but he fails to observe that 
the nominal punishment, which he will not abrogate till 
the secondary is improved, is taking from the secondary 
all that should be its prominent terrors, and throwing it 
into the background of the gallows, where it appears 
not with the awe of the greatest evil threatened, but, by 
comparison, as a refuge. 

The first step in the improvement of the secondary 
punishment would be the removal of the capital penalty, 
which now stands before it and makes it appear light by 
a false comparison. If you would give transportation or 
long imprisonment their greatest terrors, do not threaten 
death before you inflict them. If, on the other hand, 
you would give to the penal colony or the gaol the grace 
of places of refuge, record sentence of death, and tell 
the convict you might hang him before you proceed to 
transport or imprison him. 

Secondary punishments undoubtedly require consider- 
able improvement for their full efficacy; but the first 



THE LAW. 357 



and easiest improvement is to open the distinct, the 
immediate view, of them, and to give them their due 
stern prominence as the appointed measure of crimes 
next to capital. This is to be done by removing the 
false pretence of a greater rigour, which lightens the 
aspect of the law's realities and creates a false show of 
uncertainty. 

We cannot agree with Lord John Eussell that this is a 
time for folding of hands and waiting for more experience. 
The experience already had directs us to the policy of 
giving the highest degree of awe and certainty to the 
penalty attached to crimes of the deepest dye ; and 
nothing would conduce more to this end than the limita- 
tion of the punishment of death to murder and treason, 
instead of hackneying its terrors, as now, by mock 
applications to other classes of offences. — (1840.) 



The abolitionists are falling into the fallacy of vitupe- 
ration with regard to those who are not prepared to come 
to their conclusions ; and Lord Nugent tells people who 
do not think it safe to abolish capital punishment in the 
case of murder, that they may shed blood like water, as 
if they entertained the most sanguinary propensities, and 
proposed the most extensive application of the punish- 
ment of death, instead of the narrowest. 

We have been amongst the oldest, and not the least for- 
ward or active, advocates of the mitigation of the criminal 
law : but we have always deemed the care for the safety 
of society the first duty of humanity ; and the kindness to 
the criminal that breaks down the protection of the inno- 



358 THE LAW. 



cent seems to us to deserve no better name than that of 
thoughtless cruelty. — (1846.) 



To us it seems that the example that the criminal is put 
out of the world is all that is necessary to the ends and 
policy of justice ; that the salutary example is in the fact, 
not in the spectacle of carrying the sentence into effect, 
and that the less known of the details the better for the 
dignity of justice and the honour of humanity. We have 
done with the dissection of the criminal's body ; let the 
not less loathsome anatomy of the penalty follow. — (1849.) 

TRIAL BY JURY. 

A jury is of excellent use against the oppression of the 
Crown, as a wool-pack is of good service against a cannon 
shot; but we. employ juries for every- day purposes of 
justice, and, strange to say, prudent men do not walk 
about fortified with wool-packs against possible bullets. 
Would we abolish that glory of Britain, the Trial by Jury ? 
No, for we know not how to do without it, until the evil 
which makes evil good is removed. A government which 
proceeds not from the people, and consequently has not 
their confidence, compels cumbrous precautions against 
abuse. To revert to our former illustration, we must 
harness ourselves with wool-packs against danger from 
our Lord the King. Under these circumstances, the 
institution is not one to warrant pride. But, like the 
people of the Alps, we pique ourselves on our wens. — 
(1827.) 



TEE LAW. 359 



EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES. 

The trial of Madame LafFarge 1 has terminated in a 
verdict of guilty under extenuating circumstances! If 
the woman be guilty, what can be the extenuatiDg 
circumstances? She is either completely innocent, or 
she is guilty of a murder the most cold-blooded and 
treacherous ; and the circumstances of the crime were 
circumstances of the most heinous aggravation. The 
verdict is either a cruel wrong to innocence, or it is an 
encouragement to assassination. 

The fact appears to be that a few theatrical airs upon 
a trial constitute what French juries call 'extenuating 
circumstances.' This is not the first verdict of guilty 
under extenuating circumstances upon cases of the 
murder of husbands by their wives. Interesting poisoners 
are not uncommon in France. If the husband be old 
and ugly and the wife young and spiritual, the circum- 
stances of poisoning him are ' extenuating.' We prefer 
the English verdict on the parallel case of the husband 
who had killed a shrew — sawed her right. This is at 
least intelligible, which the ' extenuating circumstances ' 
of the French are not. That Madame LafFarge poisoned 
her unfortunate husband, seems certain enough : but for 
what it served him right in the opinion of the Jury we 
are at a loss to divine, except indeed that he was incon- 
venient to a wife who had a young lover. But the lady 
acted her part theatrically, and a theatrical drapery in 
France covers a multitude of sins. 

1 Tried in Paris for the murder of her husband by the administration of 
arsenic. — (Ed.) 



360 THE LAW. 



The c Chronicle ' observes that there are now no less 
than nine or ten parricides in France who have been found 
guilty under extenuating circumstances ; and we have 
been reminded that the Jury, in delivering its verdict on 
one of them, explained that the circumstance extenuating 
the murder of the father was, that the prisoner had also 
before murdered his mother. — (1840.) 

THE LAWYERS AT LOGGERHEADS. 

A man who has said any enormously foolish thing never 
retracts. He lies by till some mention is made of it in 
which he may be sure to find some slight inaccuracy, 
upon which he raises an outcry of misrepresentation ; 
and the nonsense which he did talk is then lost sight of 
in the much ado about the nonsense which he did not 
talk. 

The House of Commons published a Eeport on the 
state of Newgate, in which the Inspector stated, amongst 
other examples of mismanagement, that an obscene book, 
published by Stockdale, was found in the possession of a 
prisoner. Upon this the virtuous Stockdale brought his 
series of actions for libel, and the Chief Justice Denman, 
in his judgment, remarked — 

8 That the defamatory matter had no bearing on any 
question in Parliament, or that could arise there, and 
that the nature of the book had nothing on earth to do 
with the question as to hoiv prisons could best be regidated' 

A more enormous absurdity than this was surely never 
uttered. In Bacine's * Plaideurs ' there is nothing to 
equal it in extravagance. 

The inquiry of the Commons was whether the re^ula- 



THE LAW. 361 



tion of Newgate was what it ought to be, or whether it 
required amendment, and the Chief Justice declared, ex 
cathedra, that the nature of a book found in the hands of 
a prisoner had nothing on earth to do with the question 
as to the regulation of the gaol, and that whether the 
book was obscene or decent could have no influence in 
determining how prisons could best be regulated. Why, 
the fact that the book was obscene was one of the evi- 
dences of defective regulation, and one of the grounds 
showing the necessity for an improved management. 
Suppose that instead of a bad book a woman of the town 
had been found with a prisoner, the Chief Justice, by a 
parity of reasoning, would have held that the character 
of the woman should not have been adverted to, as it 
was quite irrelevant to prison discipline whether the 
person was Mrs. Fry or Miss Millwood. 

According to the sage Chief Justice, the Keport should 
only have stated that a book was found, suppressing any 
mention of its character, and leaving people to suppose 
that it was the Bible, or the i Whole Duty of Man ; ' 
and this was to enlighten the public as to the state of 
Newgate, and to show the occasion for better regulations ! 
Cards were found ; and why were they called cards in 
the Eeport ; why not pasteboard ? A cribbage -board 
was found ; why was the use of the bit of wood with 
holes in it mentioned ? Porter was found ; why was its 
quality named ; why not described as a liquid ? It 
will be answered, naming the natures of these things did 
no injury to anyone's character ; but this is not so ; the 
presence of such things in the prison argued gross mis- 
conduct on the part of the managers of the gaol, and 



362 THE LAW. 



hurt thein, we have no doubt, incomparably more than 
the charge of having published an obscene book hurt the 
virtuous publisher of ' Harriette Wilson's Memoirs. ' 

The dictum of Chief Justice Denman, reduced to a 
proposition, would be, that the nature of a thing is irre- 
levant to an inquiry whether the thing should be where it 
is found. 

Lord Denman does not retract a syllable of his 
monstrous proposition ; he avows his adherence to it, and 
repeats the shallow remark : 

' And how could it at all bear upon the question as to 
the way in which a privilege of the House of Commons 
was exercised whether a particular man had in his 
possession an obscene book or not ? ' 

It is a privilege of the House to publish the grounds 
of its proceedings. It is a privilege of the House to 
show that it has grounds for improving the regulation 
of a gaol, by showing that things of a very improper 
character are found in such gaol. The fact of the 
character of the book bears on the question of privilege 
precisely as the fact of the character of the book was 
one of the circumstances on which the House was to 
prove that the exercise of its legislative authority in com- 
pelling better regulation was called for. 

Why is not an indictment, or a declaration, or evidence, 
impugning the characters of persons in Courts of Law, 
liable to prosecutions for libel, or for slander ? Because 
they are necessary to the proceedings of the Court ; and 
on the same ground precisely the publication of facts 
discreditable to individuals is privileged and protected by 
the Commons. 



THE LAW. 3G3 



The character of a servant is a privileged communica- 
tion. The mistress of a family has to state that she 
found the woman who had the charge of her daughters 
in the habit of reading an indecent book. Has the nature 
of the book nothing to do with the question whether this 
was a privileged communication ? 

There can have been no disposition in any quarter to 
run down Lord Denman. When at the bar there was no 
man more beloved and esteemed. He was looked up 
to with respect as the very model of a high-minded 
gentleman. The best men of his time have been proud 
to call him friend. In private character no man ever 
stood higher. In his public career he has generally borne 
his faculties so as never to provoke to disparagement, or 
to an unfriendly questioning of his pretensions, ordinarily 
kept within the bounds of his merit and modesty. It 
has therefore been with pain and reluctance that persons 
having a sincere and deep respect for his general character 
have felt compelled to notice errors in his judicial career, 
such as his conduct in Lord Waldegrave's trial ; his ful- 
some compliments to Lord Cardigan, solemnly acquitted 
of an offence of which he had been notoriously guilty ; 
and lastly, his bearing in the conflict with the Commons, 
which has been as wanting in decorum as his decision has 
been in judgment. Besides these instances might be 
noted some examples of a leaning to the protection of 
strained or abused authority, which may be referable to 
that anxiety to appear clear of one bias which precipi- 
tates a man into another. It lias not been out of any 
disposition to find fault with Lord Denman that these 
errors have been censured, but notwithstanding the 



364 THE 1AW. 



prepossession in his favour, and the expectation that his 
judicial career would be marked by the same qualities 
that had so honourably distinguished the preceding part 
of his life.— (1843.) ' 

THE BAE AXD THE PRESS. 

The Press and the Bar are at war. The gentlemen of 
the Western and the Oxford Circuits are of opinion that it 
is inconsistent with the dignity and independence of their 
body for any member of it to furnish reports to a news- 
paper. 

The Italians say that they never heard any talk of 
virtue till the English came amongst them, and the talk 
of the thing was probably no sign of its increased preva- 
lence. The Bar is always boasting of its honour and in- 
dependence. The other professions, the Army, the Navy, 
the Church, the Physicians and Surgeons, are not for ever 
talking of their honour and independence. A woman 
who is always boasting of her virtue gets suspected ; 
indeed there is an immodesty in the vaunt ; and men who 
are always prating of their honour and independence 
raise the question whether it is as much in their hearts as 
in their mouths. 

The talk of the honour of the Bar is too apt to remind 
one of the honour proverbial amongst thieves ; and in the 
two codes of honour, so far as they are known, the same 
principle is observable ; the limitation of the fair dealing 
to the class, and no extension of it to the public. The 
lawyer is not to do this or that to the lawyer : lie may do 
what he likes to the non-professional. 

No other body of men, excepting the electors of close 



THE LAW. 365 



boroughs, make the same boast of their independence ; 
and, if their honour has no more reality, their moral 
plight must be rather a bad one. They are dependent on 
the attorneys ; and it is only a Komilly, a Scarlett, a 
Follett, who surmounts that dependence. Every junior 
barrister depends on the attorneys for the opportunity of 
exhibiting whatever knowledge and talents he may possess. 
Men established in practice, but not having the rare fame 
or fashion making their employment in every cause a 
matter of course, would lose their bread with the loss of 
the attorneys' favour. 

What in the world, then, is the peculiar independence 
of the Bar ? Of whom or of what is it that they are so 
specially independent ? 

If they talked to us of their dependence, we could un- 
derstand their arguments better. If, for instance, the 
gentlemen of the Western and Oxford Circuits alleged 
that regard to their dependence made it inexpedient to 
allow members of their body to report for newspapers, 
the plea would be at least intelligible ; the apprehension 
being that to the dependence on attorney may be added 
dependence on the reporter, who has opportunities of 
making or marring the fame recommending counsel to 
employment. 

And how is it that the Western and Oxford Circuits 
now for the first time feel their dignity and independence 
in danger from professional reporters ? Is the Bar more 
frail than formerly ? Are its dignity and independence 
less able to hold out against temptations to truckling? 
Have barristers less confidence in each other than for- 
merly ; are they more suspicious and jealous ; have they 



366 THE LAW. 



less reliance and less reason for reliance on the dignity 
and independence about which they make such a noise ? 

In former days the Bar could take care of its dignity 
and honour, even though barristers reported for news- 
papers. In the days of Eomilly, Stephen and Starkey 
reported ; in more recent times, and compatibly with the 
aforesaid dignity and independence, a Campbell and a 
Talfourd have reported. The virtue of the Bar could 
bear it then. Is it feebler now ? The Clergy, when they 
are in anger at anything, put the d to it, and call out that 
the Church is in danger. The Bar cries that its virtue is 
in danger, a thing which no Scipio ever did. It is prudery 
that is justly suspected for taking fright at what should 
have no seductive force. A robust integrity demands no 
new safeguards, discovers no temptations where none had 
hitherto been felt. 

With reference to some recent cases of legal immorality, 
it will be said that the conduct in question was condemned 
by the profession as exceeding the Counsel's license ; but 
was the condemnation carried into any practical effect ? 
Were the advocates expelled the circuit, or disbarred, as 
having compromised the dignity of the profession ? Did 
their brethren shun them ? Was any mark of discoun- 
tenance put upon them ? On the very first opportunity 
one was raised to the Bench in the Court of Bankruptcy ; 
the other to the Solicitor-Generalship, whence he will 
probably pass to one of the highest seats in Judicature ! 

We are not sorry that the indiscreet conduct of a part 
of the Bar has called attention to its morality, which we 
consider most vicious and mischievous ; but we are also 
quite ready to admit that the sins of the profession are 



THE LAW. 86 ; 



generally confined to the profession, and that a body of 
men more honourable and more truthful than the lawyers 
are out of their Courts cannot be found. It is only in the 
place devoted to the investigation of truth that they are 
the advocates of falsehood for a guinea ; it is only in the 
very temple of Justice that they glory in procuring the 
triumph of the wrong-doer. 

We are acquainted with one honourable instance of 
revolt against the professional morality. A gentleman 
of superior abilities, advanced in his profession, high on 
his circuit if not leader of it, and making a handsome in- 
come, retired, made a sacrifice of all that he had spent 
half a life in labouring for, because he could not reconcile 
the licenses of the advocate with the notions of honour, 
justice, and morality. — (1845.) 

THE COUKT OF JENNERS. 

The Court of Arches is a Court impersonal. In other 
courts the judge frequently speaks of himself, but in the 
Court of Arches the President's name is never heard ; it is 
the Court that feels this and that, and does this and that. 
The Court was the other day ' disgusted,' and more re- 
cently it was ' indignant ; ' but a Court should know only 
one mood, that of justice, and the calmness and dispas- 
sionateness belonging to it. Disgust and indignation 
should be utterly foreign to the feelings of a Court of Law. 

But this Court of Arches is unlike any other Court. 
It is a Court with a large family tree planted in it. The 
Court has a son a Proctor, another an Advocate ; it has 
a son-in-law brother-in-law of a party in a suit, and two 
sons who are indebted to the same party for hospitality. 



368 THE LAW, 



There is no other Court that presents such delightful 
domestic features. You are in that Court in the bosom 
of a family amongst whom reigns the most perfect concord." 
They are all Proctors, Advocates, &c, as like one another 
as so many peas. Take care, therefore, not to mistake the 
Judge for the Advocate, or the Advocate for the Judge. 
The Judge speaks in the name of the Court, because of 
the number of the Jenners, whose name is Legion. He 
is called Fust Jenner, a corruption of First Jenner, to 
signify that he stands first on the family list ; but to tell 
who is last Jenner would require a vast deal of counting, 
for there are Jenners without end in that Court. The 
Court has ceased to be known and described as the Court 
of Arches : an unmeaning- name ; it is now called the 
Court of Jenners. — (1848.) 

THE PALACE COURT. 1 

The question that occurs to everyone, upon Jacob 
Omnium's exposure of the Palace Court, is why such a 
nuisance was allowed to survive the institution of the 
County Courts, which should have superseded it ? The 
Palace Court, with its monopolies of barristers and attor- 
neys, must have been bad enough at any and every time; 
but the establishment of the County Courts was actually 
calculated to make it worse ; and yet, for some unaccount- 
able reason, it was permitted to continue its existence after 
that measure of reformation. 



1 It will be remembered how Mr. Iliggins, under his nom de plume of Jacob 
Omnium, exposed the iniquity of this Court in the ' Times/ and, aided by the 
fun and humour of Thackeray in 'Punch/ succeeded in getting it abolished. 
— (Editor.) 



THE LAW. 369 



From the moment that a Court affording cheap justice 
was created, it obviously became the evil interest of the 
Palace Court to preserve its custom by bidding for plain- 
tiffs, and making the cost of resisting claims as heavy as 
possible to defendants. Its policy was to hold a dear shop 
in rivalry with the cheapness of the County Courts. ' Here 
we punish defendants,' might be the promise over the doors. 
4 The Court for Plaintiffs,' should be its great advertise- 
ment. But so well is the thing understood that the 
common threat upon any demur against a demand is to 
put the party into the Palace Court : a menace full of 
significance, and which compels submission to many an 
extortionate claim. Every knave knows how to use the 
costs of the Palace Court so as to counsel submission ; and 
somehow or other it is remarked that plaintiffs are very 
successful in that Court, though it is not for a moment to 
be supposed that gratitude for bringing grist to the mill 
has anything to do with that circumstance. 

The phenomenon of the general success of plaintiffs has 
its effects, whatever may be the cause ; and claimants go 
where there is such an extraordinary run both of blind 
fortune and of blind justice for their class. Defendants in 
the same tribunal are of course looked upon with no 
friendly eye ; for how should they be regarded but witli 
an adverse feeling, when it is remarked that they are 
always in the wrong ? The honest attorneys and counsel 
naturally entertain a prejudice, if not some spice of ill- 
will, against a class of persons who come there to resist 
the fair claims upon them. Mr. Omnium's advocate was 
quite ashamed of his cause ; but, to be sure, he had not 
learnt the merits of it ; for this simple reason, probably, 

B B 



370 THE LAW. 



that no defendant's case in the Palace Court is supposed 
to have any merits. It never occurred to Mr. Omnium's 
counsel that he could have right on his side ; and the 
learned gentleman did not know that his client was 
charged with the keep of a horse got out of his possession 
by swindling pretences, till the verdict was given against 
him, and the costs extorted Mr. Omnium's vehement pro- 
testations. This shows the sort of chance defendants have 
in that court, and that, the opinion running against them 
as much as the judgments, an advocate does not think it 
worth while to inquire even into the facts of their cases. 

The days of the Plaintiffs' Court may now, however, be 
considered as numbered, for, in the classical language of 
the Polite Conversations, it got the wrong sow by the ear 
when it gripped Jacob Omnium, and his exposure of it is 
tantamount to sentence of abolition. But what will ulti- 
mately abate the nuisance will temporarily be of vast 
service to it, for every knave who reads the Omnium 
statement will forthwith rush to that court, or make it 
the sword and shield of his extortions. ' Your money, or 
the Palace Court ! ' will be the dread alternative. As 
when the fat old gentleman cried out that he was robbed of 
his hat, a bystander asking why he did not pursue the thief, 
the despoiled replied, in batter-pudding accents, ' I am so 
corpulent I cannot stir a step without losing my breath.' 
' Not a step ? ' repeated the interrogator. c Not a step, if 
my life depended on it.' ' Then here goes at your wig,' 
was the response ; the action suited to the word, and the 
wig following the hat. 

And similar in encouragement will be the consequence 
of proclaiming the hapless helpless lot of defendants in the 



THE LAW. 371 



Palace Court. As you cannot resist a fleecing, fleeced you 
will be ; and, because Jacob Omnium has been robbed of 
his hat, his neighbour will be pillaged of his wig. For the 
present the exposure is the best possible advertisement for 
the Court ; but it must make hay while the sun shines, 
for its days are numbered. — (1848.) 

ALDERMANATION OF JUSTICE. 

The flower of Justices' justice is Aldermen's justice. We 
were obliged some years since to invent a name for it. 
The thing being sui generis, and having no bearing at all 
on legal administration, or judicial administration, or 
common-sense administration of any kind, we called it 
Aldermanation. From time to time choice specimens of 
it adorn our columns, and but for other demands on our 
space we need never publish a number without it. The 
propensity to foolish talk and incredibly foolish conclu- 
sions never subsides in the City. — (1849.) 

LAW REFORM. 

Once upon a time, at a fair, we saw a hare beating a 
drum. The distress of the hare at a performance so re- 
pugnant to its quiet, timid nature may easily be imagined. 
At the sound of every tap the hare recoiled, but he per- 
sisted nevertheless ; and, not sparing himself long rolls of 
the drum now and then, which .seemed as nothing less 
than death to his nature, he yet held on to the conclu- 
sion of his ill-allotted part. No creature but a hare could 
do the thing of whicli it was so intensely afraid. 

When we see the Lord Chancellor engaged in law 
reform we again see our hare beating the drum. He 

B B 2 



372 THE LAW. 



seems to wield the stick with right good will : but, when 
the note is struck, he too is struck with alarm at his 
doings, and seems as if he would gladly recall the sound. 
Yet he goes on, beating away, and quaking as he beats. 

MEDICAL EVIDENCE IN CRIMINAL TEIALS. 

It will always be observed in a criminal trial that, if the 
highest medical authorities are of one opinion, the oppo- 
site opinion is sure to be maintained by members of the 
profession who are of no authority whatever. To main- 
tain a thesis against such a man as Sir Benjamin Brodie, is 
a distinction for an obscure practitioner. It brings him 
into notice. It is the cheapest and best advertisement. 
The first surgeon of our time is of one opinion, but Galli- 
pot and Bolus are of another, and Gallipot and Bolus 
must be men of mark, or they would not presume to 
take the field against Sir Benjamin Brodie. And these 
men thus actually derive an importance from the authority 
which they have the ignorance or impudence, or both, to 
dispute. They differ from Sir B. Brodie, forsooth. They 
are in the lists against the first authority. As Cobbett 
expressed it, the bug brags of being the man's bedfellow. 

The medical profession is a very large one, and it is no 
reproach to it to say that it must have many unsuccessful 
and some unworthy members, who are always on the look 
out for opportunities of making their names heard of, and 
attracting attention. A hardy assertion against a re- 
corded opinion or scientific experience, upon such an oc- 
casion as the late trial, is a sure way of obtaining notoriety. 
The greater the paradox, the greater the attention it attracts 
when life and death are at stake. — (185G.) 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 373 



CHAPTEE V. 
FOREIGN POLITICS, 



THE AUTOCEAT OF ALL THE TAILOES. 

The Eussian Ukase, published -in our last number, 
prohibiting the costume of the Poles, and prescribing 
the cut and colour of the clothes which it is the Auto- 
crat's pleasure that they shall wear, and which are to be 
had at his imperial slop-shops ' under prime cost,' as he 
advertises, has excited more disgust than any other act of 
tyranny of our time, inasmuch as it is the smallest act of 
tyranny of our time — the meanest act of tyranny of our 
time. It is an act of tyranny, indicating at once the 
deepest hatred and the smallest mind. There is in it the 
largest stretch of authority to the most despicable matters, 
to the pettiest vexation. Here is a tyranny below the 
dignity of fetters, a tyranny of stuffs and gaberdines — a 
tyranny of slops — a tyranny of buttons instead of bolts — 
and which confines its victims to stuffs instead of to stone 
walls. The man ought to be ridiculed on every stage in 
the civilised world, and should pass henceforth, not under 
the name of the Autocrat, but the more strictly character- 
istic one of the Slop- seller. As Peter the Great learnt naval 
architecture practically in a ship-builder's yard, so let us 



374 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

imagine the great Nicholas apprenticing himself to a 
tailor and man-milliner to acquire the art of regulating 
the cut and colour of the coats and breeches, the smocks 
and petticoats, of his Polish victims. Imagine him in the 
disguise of the ninth-part of a man prying into the under 
garments of his Polish subjects, and meditating the ever- 
sion of a costume, and the establishment of gaberdines. 
His rod is now the cloth-yard of the man-milliner, his 
imperial measures are now the tailor's measures. Despo- 
tism is the author of its own richest burlesque on the 
stage of Poland.— (1838). 

THE FORTIFICATIONS OF PAEIS. 

We have witnessed many strange things in our time, 
but the most whimsical of all is certainly the fortification 
of Paris. It is a new sight to see a people most indus- 
triously and joyfully engaged in building a huge gaol for 
themselves : throwing up works commanding their own 
liberties, planting cannon which may strike noisy Paris 
dumb and make its malcontent citizens quiet as mice, 
under any coup d'etat of the sovereign authority. 

The fortification of Paris is the counter-work to the 
Eevolution of July : it is the barricade reversed. It de- 
clares that there shall be but one more revolution, when- 
ever the occasion is ripe for it. The machinery for a 
tyranny will all be fabricated, and in position, and nothing 
wanting but the despotic spirit to turn the ready-made 
powers to their bad uses. 

When the tyrant's artisan made the brazen bull, he had 
no presage that he was to be the first sufferer in it ; and 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 375 

so the Parisians are delighted to construct their bull, 
without a suspicion that it will be their allotted part to 
bellow in it. They applaud it, they pay for it, they build 
it, they will be held fast in it. The wickedest old city 
in the world at last puts itself in gaol. 

They know not what they are doing, it will be said ; 
but shameful is the defence that France is so carried away 
by fear of foreign enemies as to lose sight of her own 
liberties and their safe keeping. If she be not acting in 
fear she is acting in bravado, and what bravado, and at 
what a price ! a bravado at the cost of the securities for 
liberty, and the sorry bravado of saying that a foreign 
enemy may ravage all France, but shall not capture Paris ! 
But in such a bravado must be implied the design of some 
great aggression, the invasion of neighbouring countries, 
the attack on their liberties, and a hold to retreat to in 
the capital in the event of failure and retaliation ; and in 
this case a fitness of a certain bad kind is observable, 
namely, that the appui for attempts against the liberties 
of other nations involves in danger the liberties of the 
people entertaining such criminal designs. 

In one view the fortification of Paris may certainly 
diminish the chances of foreign invasion. The despotic 
Powers have been inimical to France because of the ex- 
ample of her revolutions, and the democratic opinions 
which triumphed in the last of them ; but when they see 
Paris under the lock and key of the King, bolted in by 
forts bristling with cannon, and barred in by circumval- 
lations, even their jealousy of the democratic tendencies 
of France may be dismissed, and they may leave the King 



376 FOBEIGN POLITICS. 

with the new powers put into his hands, to settle the 
question of liberty and constitutional rights with the 
people at the feet of his fortresses. 

The conduct of the French Liberals on this occasion is 
a matter for wonder and lamentation. They have been 
the most eager for the defences against improbable ex- 
ternal dangers, which will be their sure shackles at home. 

The valour of the French is beyond dispute, but on 
this question it would have been well if their daring and 
their caution had changed directions ; if their fears and 
their prudence had been more for liberty at home ; their 
rashness, and neglect of defensive precautions, for enemies 
abroad. The excess of caution and the excess of hazard 
have both been miserably misplaced. 

If it had so happened that the Press of England had, 
instead of ridiculing the fortification of Paris, approved 
of it, we strongly suspect that the Liberals of France 
would have begun to see in it all the dangerous uses to 
which it may be turned ; for since the unfortunate differ- 
ences have arisen between the two countries, our neigh- 
bours judge of all things by the rule of contraries, and 
infer that whatever is done or approved by England must 
be injurious to themselves, or that whatever is objected 
to or discountenanced by us must be beneficial to them. 

It is, however, with a sincere interest in the liberties 
and the dignity of France that her best friends in England 
lament the fortification of Paris as both unworthy of a 
great and brave people, and unsafe to a great and brave 
people, who may defy ' any invasion but the invasion 
which they themselves are now facilitating : the invasion 
of their civil rights. — (1841.) 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 377 



THE WAKS OF ETIQUETE. 

In the Facetice of Hierocles a scholar asks his sick friend 
how he does ; and, receiving no answer, he flies into a 
passion and exclaims, 'Ah, I hope it will be my turn to 
be sick soon, and when you inquire how I am I will not 
tell you.' 

The retaliation of mighty potentates now-a-days is very 
much like the retaliation of the simpleton in the old Greek 
story, but with this improvement, that the illness is feigned 
and vicarious. 

The French Ambassador at Petersburg is ordered to be 
sick on the Emperor's birthday, and unable to offer his 
congratulations. The Emperor is not without his revenge. 
Like the scholar of Hierocles, he hopes that it will be his 
turn to be sick by representative soon ; and, his Ambas- 
sador having been directed to run away, his Charge 
d' Affaires has instructions to fall ill on the 1st of January, 
and to fail accordingly to offer the new-year congratula- 
tions to Louis Philippe. 

What a vast improvement is this upon the old modes of 
waging quarrels between crowned heads. Fifty years 
ago the same provocation might have been the cause of a 
long and bloody war ; but now, instead of the destruction 
of thousands on both sides, the wrath of kings is satisfied 
with the sickness, and that pretended, of their respective 
diplomatists. How much better is this childish duel of 
indispositions, requiring no doctor, than the barbarous old 
recourse to arms, punishing multitudes on both sides 
who had no part or interest in the quarrel. A princely 
pique, which would once on a time have found a voice in 



378 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

the roar of a hundred cannons, now conies to its extremi- 
ties on the one side with the resolution, ' I will not com- 
pliment him on his birthday ;' on the other, 'And I will 
be even with him, for I will not congratulate him on New- 
Year's day.' 

How incomparably better is this than sabring and 
shooting each other's subjects. ISTo waste of blood and 
treasure in this quarrel, no list of killed and wounded ; 
one diplomatist, on each side, sick for a forenoon only, and 
that only in sham. And, instead of the ruinous expendi- 
ture of wars, the retrenchment of the compliments of the 
season satisfies the once terrible wrath of Kings. This is 
the cut between Sovereigns ; and how vast an improvement 
it is on that vengeance which they used to take, not by 
cutting each other, but by their cutting the throats of each 
other's subjects. As the last resource of the people against 
the Sovereign is now-a-days to stop the supplies instead of 
stopping his breath, as in more violent times, so let the 
last extremity of princes towards each other be the stop- 
ping of the civilities. — (1842.) 

LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

We have heard only one excuse for Louis Philippe's 
plot to overthrow the Government of Spain, and that is 
the uncontrollable force of his family affections. It is 
alleged that he is so devoted to every branch of his family 
that he loses sight of all the dictates of prudence and all 
the distinctions of right and wrong when any opportunity 
of serving them occurs. * 

In the slang of thieves the burglar is called ' the family 
man,' which would seem to signify some connection, like 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 379 

that to be traced in the recent conduct of Louis Philippe, 
between the domestic ties and breaking into one's neigh- 
bour's house. Yet so modest are the smaller order of 
rogues, that we have never heard the apology of the 
affections offered in palliation of their trespasses against 
the rights of property. An attempt at murder and 
robbery has never yet, we believe, been excused on the 
ground that the culprit did it to aggrandise his family. 

The first of ' the family men ' for whom this plea has 
been set up is His Most Christian, or, let us suggest the 
emendation, His Most Christina, Majesty the King of the 
French. 

' There are men,' says Bacon, ' who are such self-lovers 
that they will set their neighbour's house on fire to roast 
their own eggs in the embers.' One of this class is cer- 
tainly the much-lauded Louis Philippe, who would throw 
a nation into the horrors of civil war to steal a crowned 
match for his son. The return due to him for the money 
he has spent for this object is the guilt of all the blood 
that has been spilt, and the infamy of the vilest 
treachery. — (1841.) 



A very ugly man, who was a great horticulturist, being 
found by a visitor perched up in a cherry tree, his friend 
exclaimed, * No wonder, Philip, that you have the finest 
fruit in the country ; for you are not only your own gar- 
dener, but, egad, you are your own scarecrow too.' Louis 
Philippe combines the same sort of offices. He is not only 
the cultivator of Conservatism, but, perched upon the 
throne of France, he is also his own scarecrow of revolu- 
tion. A people who see what they have done in such a 



380 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

result may vow to make no more revolutions, as folks 
who have been disappointed in any benevolent office 
solemnly resolve never to do another good action. — (1842.) 



A great admiration of the wisdom of Louis Philippe was 
at one time the fashion, and many eulogies of him have 
been delivered by the leading statesmen in both Houses of 
Parliament. We have always questioned the justness of 
those panegyrics. We have never been able to discover 
the grounds for them. Louis Philippe in our view is a 
wily man, but not a wise one. He is crafty in his man- 
agement of means for an end, but short-sighted in his 
choice of objects. He does not form correct calculations 
of difficulties ; but, when they arise, he is dexterous in 
coping with them. He is perpetually making the mistake 
proverbially described as ' reckoning without your host ; ' 
but, when out in his reckoning, he is very ingenious in 
shifts, and contrives to leave the host in the lurch. We 
have often heard it said, ' What a clever man Louis 
Philippe is ! see how he gets out of his difficulties ; ' but 
the answer has always seemed to us to be : ' See also 
how he got into his difficulties.' This is what the world 
does not look to. As the ' Great Britain's ' getting ashore 
was a nine days' wonder, while getting her off again 
has occupied the public attention for a year, so Louis 
Philippe's triumph over embarrassments of his own 
creating has filled with admiration minds that have 
ceased to remember how he got into the scrape. His 
sort of cleverness is like that of a clown in a pantomime, 
who vigorously knocks his head against the wall without 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 381 

hurting himself. Never was there a greater mistake than 
that of ascribing prudence to him. He is adroit, but 
not prudent. He has in an eminent degree the French 
genius for making shift, — for making the best of bad 
positions, and turning men and circumstances to account. 
But this kind of dexterity will not always avail ; it will 
be overmastered at last : the pitcher goes once too often 
to the well. And the present imprudence of the King of 
the French threatens to be irreparable. He has not 
observed that wise rule of Mcol Jarvie, not to put the 
arm in further than it can be safely drawn back again. 
He has overreached himself in Spain, and for dynastic 
objects endangered his dynasty. The train of embarrass- 
ing events is likely to be longer than his life, and any 
precipitated solution of them would have the most grave 
consequences. Louis Philippe's last days will be passed in 
cares and troubles, the bitter fruits of his own cupidity 
— ' the mighty pains to mighty mischiefs due.' — (1847.) 



We have before observed that Louis Philippe has, in 
a way, profited largely by his acquaintance with many 
vicissitudes of fortune. From the period when he was a 
French master to that when lie became master of the 
French, he has been hoarding experiences of different 
lots, by which he has learnt the sensitive and vulnerable 
places of each, and how they may be assailed with the 
most malignant effect. Eeversing the beautiful sentiment 
of Virgil, that Prince may say that, not unacquainted with 
misfortune, he has learnt how to wound the unfortunate. 
He has the advantage, which the practical anatomist had 



382 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

in assassination, of knowing how to aim his weapon at 
the tenderest and the mortal places. Whenever from 
any sordid canse — and sordid the cause always is — his 
ill-will has been moved, his rule has been this simple one, 
to do unto others as he would not, under the same cir- 
stances, have had others do unto him. 

In the probable course of events, the two princes (the 
Due d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville), who are said 
to have departed so suddenly lest they should happen to 
meet Espartero, will at some future day be again on 
these shores as their father was before them, and as were 
his two predecessors on the throne ; and hard will be 
their fate if it be divested of those consolations which 
their sordid and ungenerous House grudges to those who 
are the objects of its hate, in the same proportion that 
they have been the sufferers by its injuries, both open 
and covert. 

These Orleans Bourbons are the proverbial beggars on 
horseback, and have a pitiless hoof for the unfortunate that 
are overthrown in the path of their ambition. They are 
now too, in the elation of seeming safety, in their saddles. 
All their treacheries have succeeded. To steal a match 
they have set their neighbour's house on fire, and ex- 
pelled the faithful steward. At home, they have the 
short-sighted, foolish people of the capital fast incarce- 
rated in the huge gaol of their own building. 

But, notwithstanding all that stone and iron can do, 
and the craft of the falsest of men, and the blindness of 
the most infatuated of people, England may again see 
Bourbons seeking her shelter as Espartero their victim 
does now ; but without Espartero's claims to honour for 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 383 

the cause in which he nobly rose by his own talents and 
worth ; from which he fell by the treachery and wicked- 
ness of others. — (1843.) 



Some of our contemporaries are tearing their hair, and 
rending their garments, and scattering ashes on their 
heads, because the Duke of Bordeaux has a tail, a regular 
pig-tail, of French Eoyalists paying homage to him and 
be-kinging him. 

It is said that Louis Philippe is made miserable by this 
ado, and that all availeth not to comfort him while the 
Morel ecai sits in the gate of the Queen's Pimlico. 

We have never undertaken the office of comforter to 
the King of the French, but it is time that we should 
begin. 

Solomon says there is safety in a number of counsellors, 
in which he is quite wrong : but there is safety in a num- 
ber of Pretenders ; and Louis Philippe has to observe 
that we have in this realm another claimant to the French 
Crown in the person of one self-styled the Duke of Nor- 
mandy ; and these two Pretenders should settle their rival 
claims before either should inspire any uneasiness in the 
breast of the King of the French. Each has had his fol- 
lowers, though of different sorts, the Duke of Bordeaux 
having been followed by French Carlists, and the Duke 
of Normandy by English creditors. The Duke of Bor- 
deaux has not been noticed in any way by the Court ; the 
Duke of Normandy has had much of the notice of the 
Court for Insolvent Debtors. The Duke of Bordeaux has 
not been received at the Court of St. James's : the Duke 



384 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

of Normandy has been not only received at the Court of 
Bequests and the Court of Conscience, but specially and 
urgently summoned to attend them. The Duke of Nor- 
mandy has been shot at in proof of his claims ; the Duke 
of Bordeaux has no such evidence to show in support of 
his pretensions. So far how much the balance of credit 
is on the side of the Duke of Normandy. 

But it is not enough to compare the two. Louis 
Philippe has shut up in one of his prisons a third Pre- 
tender, who went in the ' City of Boulogne ' steam-boat 
to take France, and who did take nothing but Champagne, 
a province for which he had a peculiar capacity, till he 
himself was taken in turn. Let Louis Philippe instantly 
release and send over to England this third Pretender, 
and then they may fight the triangular combat of Capt. 
Marryat ; the Duke of Normandy firing away his pre- 
tensions against the Duke of Bordeaux, the Duke of 
Bordeaux against Prince Napoleon, the Prince Napoleon 
against the Duke of Normandy. Defendit numerus is a 
good maxim, especially in the case of Pretenders. Let 
the gentlemen first settle it amongst themselves. The 
alarms of the King of the French may wait till the rivals 
have adjusted their conflicting claims. — (1843.) 

THE NEW WORLD WAY TO PAY OLD WORLD DEBTS. 

The last news from the Jeremy Diddler of Nations 
is, that public opinion in Texas is divided between 
slavery and anti-slavery, and in certain States of the 
Union between repudiation and honesty, or, in other 
words, between the old way of paying debts and the New 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 385 

World's way of renouncing them. What creditable dis- 
cussions are these two ! 

There is a song about a miller's legacy to his sons, 
which presents an idea by which Brother Jonathan seems 
to have profited. 

The honest man, at the point of death, declares that 
he will leave his mill to the most worthy of his three 
sons, and desires each to say how he would carry on the 
trade. 

The eldest says that out of a bushel he'll steal a peck ; 
the second, improving, promises, ' out of a bushel a half 
I'd steal ; ' the third, 

Father, I am your youngest "boy, 
And making money's all my joy : 
Sooner than profit I would lack, 
Fd steal the corn and forswear the sack. 

This is the first hint of repudiation on record, and, fol- 
lowing it out, the Diddler of the world pouches the loan 
and forswears the debt. 

The Correspondent of the ' Chronicle ' says : — 
' The letter of the Eev. Sydney Smith, on the non- 
payment of the interest of the Pennsylvania State debt, 
has been extensively published in this country, eliciting 
numerous replies. Indeed, the venerable writer must 
expect a shower of paper pellets in return ; but alas ! no 
increased chance as yet for an early resumption of pay- 
ment.' 

To get cocoa-nuts the negroes throw stones at the 
monkeys in the trees : Jacko, eager for retaliation, seizes 
the first missile at paw, and returns the favour with a 
cocoa-nut, which Blacky joyfully catches. 

c c 



386 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

Mr. Sydney Smith has pelted Jonathan with his wit, in 
the hope of getting the nut of liquidation flung in return 
at his head ; but the tree (a slip of the Tyburn tree) on 
which our brother is perched bears a fruit having not the 
least resemblance to nuts, and the exchange is of the 
sorriest material. 

The Correspondent of the ' Chronicle ' continues : — 

' England is smartly peppered, and all her financial 
peccadilloes, from the reign of King John down to the 
present day, are referred to by way of showing that she 
also had not always been quite as correct as she ought.' 

So a fellow who beats the brains out of another may 
quote Cain and Abel as a precedent. 

Man, Scripture says, is prone to evil, 
But does that justify the devil ? 

We wonder that Jonathan does not cite, as a holy 
sanction, the loan of the Israelites from the Egyptians, 
with the sequence, ' and they spoiled the Egyptians.' 

For a profane and modern authority, what says Shake- 
speare, too ? ' Base is the slave who pays.' And how 
then, can free-born citizens think of doing an act base in 
the slave whom they hold as one of their most cherished 
institutions. 

Some of the American scribes maintain that they mean 
to pay some time or other, in a paulo-post future tense, 
when quite convenient. The toper, in his song in answer 
to ' Which is the best day to drink? ' finds each day good 
in its order, but the first best ; but very different is the 
response to, * Which is the best day to pay ? ' There is 
no day late enough. 

When one of our great men, at a monster meeting of 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 387 

his creditors, was much pressed to name a day, the 
spokesman assuring him that they would be content with 
any time he would appoint so that he fixed one positively 
and kept his engagement, the wit answered, ' Well, gen- 
tlemen, as you will have me fix a day, suppose we say 
the day of judgment, but as that will be a busy day, 
perhaps it will be better to name the day after.' Perhaps 
the same arrangement would suit the Diddler of the New 
World. 

We were much struck with a letter from Mr. Charles 
Matthews in the newsj)apers some short time ago, in 
which lie describes himself as torn to pieces by a ravenous 
pack of creditors. When we read it, our gall rose 
against all creditors, and it seemed to us that such 
monsters should not be suffered to exist. A day or two 
after, a turn was given to our animosities by one of Mr. 
Sydney Smith's exhibitions of the odious nature of dis- 
honest debtors. 

Now might it not be so managed that these two 
plagues should be turned against each other, and could a 
better vengeance be taken on America than to pay off Mr. 
Charles Matthews's creditors with Pennsylvanian bonds ? 
The monsters would then be fairly pitted against each other 
— an equal duel between tiger and crocodile. — (1843.) 

THE SPANISH MARRIAGE. 

We can easily believe that the murder of the Duchess 
de Praslin filled Louis Philippe with horror. It must 
have shocked his humanity, and it ought to have touched 
and alarmed his conscience ; not that he was in the re- 
motest way accountable for that particular crime, but as 

c c 2 



388 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

the example of the direful extremities to which matri- 
monial strife may be carried in high stations should have 
made him reflect with sorrow and with fear on what he 
has done and undone in Madrid. Sickening to the 
imagination is the night scene of butchery in the chamber 
of the ill-fated Duchess de Praslin : but the assassin's malice 
did not go beyond the destruction of life, and his victim 
went to her account spotless in character and with all 
her virtues unblemished. The murderer made his havoc 
of the body, hacked with his knife, stamped on the head 
with the impression of the ducal arms on. the butt end of 
the pistol ; but here ended his malice. He shortened a 
blameless life : he did not make a guilty one. He was 
assassin of the flesh, not assassin of what it enshrined. 
He wrought no corruption, no depravation, no debau- 
chery. He contented himself with vulgar murder ; there 
was an obstacle to his illicit desire, and he removed it. 
He did not doom the victim to a position in which the 
virtues could not hve, and in which the vices sure to 
spring up would tend to ruin of every kind, ruin of charac- 
ter, ruin of fame, ruin of inheritance. The assassin kept 
all the guilt to himself ; he did not work his will through 
making his victim guilty. His instrument was a knife, not 
a snare to destroy by debauchery and degradation, or to 
torture into the renouncement of rights. 

' What the eye does not see the heart does not rue.' 
The mind's eye sees the horrid scene of the wife sinking 
under the blows of the hand bound by every tie to 
protect her ; but the assassination of character and peace 
is not palpable. We see the wounds but do not trace them 
directly to the instrument, nor the instrument to the 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 889 

hand, and they are repeated at intervals. The butcher 
puts the sufferer out of pain in a few minutes : but de- 
moralising to destroy is a slow operation requiring a 
sustained cruelty, which intense cupidity will supply. 
Such examples there have been in the annals of vulgar 
crime. Donellan, the guardian who murdered his ward 
Sir Theodosius Bough ton, commenced by giving the youth 
every licentious indulgence in the hope that debauchery 
would do the work of death. He never, however, had 
the wit to think of marrying him to some woman whom 
he would inveterately hate; and, becoming impatient 
of the slow process of destroying by immorality, he 
shortened the matter with a dose of laurel water. For 
this act of comparative mercy he was hanged. The suc- 
cession to the estate was the temptation to the crime. 
Successions have much to answer for in wickedness : but 
modes are altered, and what used to be done by wars 
and throat-cutting is now brought about by weddings, 
the Hymeneal torch being borrowed from the Furies. 

But to return to our text, the piteous example of the 
assassination of the Duchess of Praslin ; what father, 
with the alternative for his daughter of a death like that 
of the unfortunate Duchess or a life like that of Isabella 
of Spain, would hesitate as to the choice ? A sudden 
violent death on the one hand ; on the other the cruellest 
position in which a woman and wife can be placed, one 
in which it is hardly possible that the virtues most be- 
fitting the female character could survive, and in which, 
if they did survive, they would not be believed to 
survive, — an incredulity most powerful tending to cast 
down morality in despair. A Lucretia may indeed exist 



390 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

with the repute of a Messalina, but that is not the 
question. It is whether any father would not prefer the 
worst death for his daughter with her mind unsullied, 
her fame unspotted, her virtues in their perfection, to 
such a lot as that which has been cast for the Queen of 
Spain, whose throne is a pillory, whose reputation is 
dragged through the kennel, whose married life has been 
a series of disgusting disappointments, mortifications, and 
angry conflict, and whose Court and report, truly or falsely, 
are the scandal of the whole civilised world. She may 
have resisted all the artful combinations of adverse cir- 
cumstances that would have demoralised ninety-nine 
w^omen out of a hundred in the same position ; but the 
question whether she has done so or not is in itself an 
infamy which makes her fate more to be pitied than the 
-victim in the late assassination, and which renders her 
destroyer not less to be execrated than the felon Duke of 
Praslin. The objects in the two cases have been different, 
but in morality the motives are hardly less criminal in 
the one instance than the other. The evil desires had 
different directions, but they crushed what stood between 
them and the coveted object with equal ruthlessness ; a 
mistress in the one case, a throne for a descendant in the 
other. 

Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato : 

Ille cruceui sceleris pretiuin tulit, bic diadeina. 

For taking away a life the law has its penalties ; but 
for taking away the happiness of a life, for taking all that 
gives it value, for taking away peace, innocence, the 
world's respect, and, worse still, self-respect, there is in 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 301 

the moral code no worse name than ambition, or the 
craving for family aggrandisement. 

Curious it is that in France, within a year, two per- 
sonages have made the world ring with actions at opposite 
ends of the matrimonial chain ; the Duke de Praslin by 
his method of dissolving a union, the matchmaking King- 
by his refinement on the torture of old of uniting a 
living with a dead body, to destroy by the repugnant 
pestiferous connexion. 

We see it announced that, by order of the Queen of 
the French, a funeral service has been performed in the 
Chapel of Eu for the repose of the Duchess of Praslin. 
If the life of the Queen of Spain should be shortened, 
and she should be despatched to the place where the 
wicked cease from troubling, it will be not for the Queen 
but for the King of the French to order a funeral service 
for the repose of Isabella's soul. He will owe it to her ; 
and, when she is no longer in the way as an obstacle, he 
will have no indisposition to pray for the repose of the 
soul his machinations so troubled in the life, for there has 
been no malice, no ill-will in the case ; nothing but greed 
— nothing but what makes a vulgar villain cut a throat 
to obtain a coveted purse. It is too general a libel on 
human, or on inhuman, nature that the injurer never for- 
gives, but hates in proportion to the wrong he has done. 
This is far from uniformly true. One of the celebrated 
German assassins, a priest who cut the throat of a 
mistress who embarrassed him, administered the last 
offices and solaces of religion to the dying victim with 
his hands reeking with her hot blood. 

Should Louis Philippe have to order a funeral service 



392 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

for the repose of the Queen Isabella, let it be in the 
Chapel of Eu, where the nuptials were discussed and the 
promise given which would have saved the young Queen 
from so much trouble and misery. — (1847.) 

m. lamartine's eepublic without republicans. 
When" M. Lamartine called for the proscription of Louis 
Napoleon, he uttered the condemnation and opprobrium of 
his Government. It could only be because M. Lamartine 
had been so dangerously weak that Louis Napoleon had 
become so dangerously strong. It was because M. La- 
martine had caused people in despair to look out for any 
man to make head against waste and anarchy, that voices 
were raised for the revival of dynasties as a refuge against 
a Jacquerie. The Assembly magnanimously negatived the 
proposal of proscription, holding it too shameful to avow 
that the weal or woe of the country depended on the 
absence or presence of an individual ; and it remains to 
be seen whether Messrs. Lamartine and Ledrii Eollin 
have reduced the Eepublic so low that it must sink under 
the mere nominis umbra of a great man. Well would it 
have been if M. Lamartine's fears had come upon him 
sooner with the extreme measures prompted by them ; 
well would it have been if he could have screwed his 
courage to the sticking place of putting aside M. Ledru 
Eollin and M. Louis Blanc, and of putting down the 
brutal Sobrier. Had these services been rendered at 
the time demanding them, the Eepublic would have 
possessed the confidence and attachment of the people, 
and not a thought would have been given, no eyes turned, 
to Pretenders. 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 393 

It has been said, with something beyond a play on words, 
that M. Lamartine has proved more evolutionary than 
revolutionary. He has indeed been exhausting himself in 
personal finesses when the occasion called for the broadest 
of broad policy for the creation of confidence. All his art 
has been exhausted to keep in position with the man who 
filled moderate France with the direst apprehensions. Yet 
it is not to be denied that M. Lamartine acquitted himself 
nobly in the earlier passages of the revolution ; but he has 
not proved equal to its continuous strain upon his energies. 
As Bacon says, there are minds like milk, which will only 
bear one skimming. 

The association with M. Ledru Eollin was most un- 
fortunate ; the one a man of purpose, the other of genius. 
In all such trials, if prolonged, the man of will, in the 
long run, will prevail against the man of reason, for the 
will never tires, the reason does, and it succumbs to 
dogged obstinacy. 

Many scornful allusions have been made to Louis 
Napoleon, and we, for our own parts, have not been 
sparing in our comments on his silly attempts atStrasburg 
and Boulogne. He has had his follies, but it is most 
unjust to take the measure of his character from those 
follies ; and all who know him will agree that, apart from 
his pretendership, which has latterly been in abeyance, he 
is a thoroughly sensible and well-informed man. He has 
had much prejudice to encounter, and not unnaturally ; 
but lie has overcome it, in whatever circles he has moved, 
by his good sense, his urbanity, and unaffected manners. 
Whether he is the man for the destinies of France may 
be discussed without a personal disparagement, which is 



394 FOREIGN POLITICS. 



really as little necessary to the solution of the question 
as it is undue. — (1848.) 



A traveller, asking his way in the United States, was 
told that there were two roads, a very detailed account of 
the demerits of which ended with the information that one 
was a good league longer than the other. ' Why did you 
not tell me that at first,' said the traveller, ' as it settles 
the choice ? ' ' Why,' answered Jonathan, ' I guess the 
shorter or longer makes little odds, for no matter which 
of the two roads you take, you will not have got far in 
either one before you'll heartily wish you had taken 
t'other/ 

This is likely to be the result of more than one election 
now before the world, with the West Biding at home, and 
the Presidency of the Eepublic abroad. Our neighbours 
will not have gone far with the man of their choice 
before they will heartily wish they had taken t'other ; and 
had they preferred him, vice versd, there would be the 
same penitence. 

Placing a Napoleon at the head of a republic seems 
much the same sort of operation as putting an extinguisher 
on the top of a candle. It is literally the capital doom of 
the institution. The poor Eepublic, like Gay's cucumber, 
having been prepared and dressed with all care, is no 
sooner finished than it is thrown away. As the one fault 
of Orlando's horse was that he was dead, so the one fault 
of the French Eepublic is that there are no Eepublicans 
to give life to it. Cavaignac was indeed one, but to have 
made him President would have alarmingly diminished 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 395 

the number of true commonwealth citizens. Such a man 
cannot be spared from the ranks ; for not having enough 
to mount sentry, it would never do to make one of the 
scanty band generalissimo. We can now understand the 
forbearance towards the Eepublicans of the red hue : for 
want of better Eepublicans, it was felt necessary to com- 
pound for the bad. 

France has been like that celebrated young man of 
Ballynacrasy, who wanted a wife to make him unasy. 
She wanted a republic to make her uneasy, and it has 
answered to her desire most completely. It is another 
version of the fable of the Old Man and Death : she has 
called for a Eepublic, the Eepublic has appeared, and its 
looks have been liked so ill that the invoker has explained 
that the summons was simply to adjust the burden of the 
bundle of sticks. ' What do you want with me ? ' asks 
the grim Eepublic. ' To clap the heir of absolute 
Napoleon on my shoulders,' is the meek response. The 
name has the prestige of despotism in the inauguration of 
freedom. To express ourselves in a bull, it has also a 
bastard legitimacy to recommend it, a spurious hereditary 
principle ; for, in the Eepublic, the royal coin that passes 
current must be of a counterfeit mint. 

Out of the frying-pan into the fire is the predicament 
of France. The rule of one is intolerable to her, and she 
flings off monarchy and hails democracy ; and then she is 
as happy as the toad under the harrow, who cried ' over 
many masters ' when every tooth gave him a tug. 

The yearnings are for monarchy ; but the monarchical 
stocks are all worn out to the stumps, and an acceptable 
monarch is as scarce an article as a true Eepubhcan. The 



396 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

Republic is Hobson's choice, and a people already sick of 
democracy take Louis Napoleon as an alternative. There 
is a sort of consistency in all these inconsistencies, as there 
is a consistency in the rush to water of a brood of ducks 
hatched by a hen. The act does not become a hen's 
family : but the mistake was in giving her the incubation, 
not in the instincts. 

It will be a curious problem now to see how a govern- 
ment repugnant to a people resolves itself into some form 
suitable to them, as a misshapen shoe with wear acquires 
an awkward kind of adjustment to the foot. Which will 
first be forthcoming, the people of Republicans, now the 
one thing wanting to the Republic, or an acceptable 
monarch, the one thing wanting for the restoration of 
monarchy ? At present the world has before it the rare 
dish of an apple-pie made of quinces. When will the 
King Pippin be found to qualify it ? 

It is idle to rail against the caprices, more seeming 
than real, of the French choice. We must not get into a 
rage with the nature of things, as did Sir Joseph Banks 
when he boiled fleas, and was wroth that they did not 
bear out a theory by turning red — ' Fleas are not lobsters, 
d — their eyes.' The French have not turned red in the 
hot water of the election. Cavaignac would have been 
the choice of true Republicans ; Napoleon is the choice 
of a people whose wishes are for anything but what is 
established. He has united the suffrages of all dissentients. 
Opposites have centred in him. He has the concord of 
the discords. Men who agree in nothing else agree in 
choosing him. He is the centre of opposite aims. The 
children of Cadmus, of the seed of the Serpent's teeth, are 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 397 

his constituency. The Furies of France have, for the 
nonce, joined hands to chair him. His majority is as great 
as the divisions of France ; all the broken pieces went to 
his account, all the fractions and fragments of conflicting 
factions and partisanships, all the odds and ends of shivered 
dynasties. 

For the peace of France we wish a different choice had 
been made, or rather we wish there had existed the 
opinion which would have dictated another choice more 
in harmony with the existing order of things ; but we will 
not join in the injustice of disparaging the man, and rating 
him as despicably inferior in capacity and qualifications. 
He is neither the one nor the other. He is above the 
average in ability, and far above it in various branches of 
knowledge. He has habits of application and reflection, 
and the only thing against him is the descent which has 
been his sole recommendation with those necessarily in 
ignorance of his character. But for the name and the 
ambition descending with it, and inviting repetition of 
despotic attempts, we should have good hopes of Louis 
Napoleon. Our fear is that with the first turn of 
fortune against him (which cannot be far distant when we 
consider the unnatural coalitions that have raised him to 
power), he will endeavour to retrieve himself by enacting 
the part of the First Consul, and plunge France into civil 
war. 

As we remarked last June, a false measure is taken of 
Louis Napoleon from his enterprises at Strasburg and 
Boulogne ; but these attempts are now to be differently 
viewed with the evidence before us of the popular favour 
Ins pretensions have found, and which he must now have 



398 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

the credit of having discerned when it was unsuspected 
by a world too logical to calculate on the prodigious incon- 
sistencies of the French people. — (1848.) 

OUR WRONGS TO THE GREEK PEOPLE. 

Otho, with the cunning of low natures, soon found 
where his strength lay. When little Isaac is told that 'his 
insignificance protects him,' he answers that his insignifi- 
cance, then, is the best friend he has in the world. The 
littleness of his power was of the same avail to Otho. 
Little as it was, it was capable of great abuses, great 
provocations ; but his defence was always his defence- 
lessness. After every escapade he was ready to throw 
himself upon his back, with his paws upwards, and his 
tongue lolled out, expressing 'kick me if you are not 
ashamed.' He was like a vixen who commits the out- 
rages of a ruffianly man, and claims the protection of the 
sex's weakness, daring the aggrieved to strike a woman. 
It was not only justifiable, but politic, to put an end to 
this protection of insignificance for every sort of wrong : 
but it is grievous to reflect that, after all, the real suf- 
ferers are the unoffending people whom we have placed 
under the yoke of this miserable king of shreds and 
patches.— (1850.) 

THE COUP D'ETAT IN PARIS. 

M. de CASSAGNAC has published an account of the pro- 
ceedings on the night of the 2nd December, which lie 
declares to have surpassed the 18th Brumaire in difficulty, 
cleverness, and grandeur. The 18th Brumaire was indeed 
a tame affair compared with it. When on that day it was 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 399 

proposed to stop the communications through Paris, 
Napoleon desired that nothing of the sort might be done, 
that everything should be left in the ordinary course ; ' for,' 
said he, ' the people will be with me, and why should I 
meddle with them or derange their convenience ? ' M. 
Bonaparte had no such reliance, and could practise no 
such forbearance. 

Sheridan and Tickell were in the habit of playing out- 
rageous practical jokes upon each other. In a country- 
house at which they were staying on a vist. Tickell laid 
an ambush for Sheridan in a dark passage, which he 
planted with knife blades and fork prongs. Sheridan, 
decoyed into the snare, fell, and got cut and pierced in 
several places. He rushed into the drawing-room stream- 
ing with blood, and vowed vengeance against Tickell for 
so cruel and wicked a trick upon him, winding up his 
threats and execrations with these words, delivered with 
genuine enthusiasm, ' But it was admirably done.' 

And the same sort of praise may be assigned to the 
2nd December, only setting aside the wickedness. Atro- 
cious acts may be cleverly executed. There have been 
assassinations evincing great skill in contrivance ; that of 
the Mannings, for example, which has several features of 
similarity to those of the 2nd December ; the artful pre- 
paration, with the hospitable invitation, and the grave 
ready dug under the table, so like the smiling reception 
at the Elysee on the night of the 1st, 

M. de Cassagnac describes, with great particularity, the 
extreme cleverness with which eighteen members of Par- 
liament were taken out of their beds and bundled off to 
gaol, in violation of the law ; and it is impossible not to 



400 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

pile at the account of the capture of M. Thiers, found 
nosing behind scarlet damask curtains lined with white 

aaslin, and with a white night-cap drawn over his eyes. 
M. ^hiers comported himself on this trying occasion like 
Je . Bon St. Andre in Canning's ' Anti- Jacobin.' He 
a ied the matter with the officer, and 

Quoted Puffendorf and Grotius, 

And proved from Vattel 

Most exceedingly well, 
Such a deed would be quite atrocious. 

At jthe same time he probably admitted, like Sheridan, 
that it was ' admirably done.' — (1851.) 

THE TYRANNY, AND ITS DANGERS FOR EUROPE. 

The hands of France are never so dangerous to her 
neighbours as when they are fettered, and she strikes 
abroad with the chain that binds her at home. She is 
not, like other despotic countries, to the manner born. 
She does not rest quiet under a tyranny as torpid Russia 
and dull Austria do, who never have known anything else ; 
no ; she must have her compensations, and must indemnify 
herself for what she has lost at home, at the expense of 
her neighbours. France must have her pride of some 
sort ; and, if it be not the pride of freedom, it must be the 
pride of conquest and aggrandisement. It is when a 
Frenchman feels himself most little as a citizen that he 
becomes most ambitious of the greatness of the nation. 
Strip him of liberty, gag him, forbid him to see and to hear 
except to obey, and nothing short of the frontier of the 
Ehine will content him. Whatever is taken from domestic 
freedom goes to foreign aggression. The one is the com- 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 



plement to the other. France must have what is fair 
her own, or she must have foully what is not her ow 
She does not as she would be done by, but as she is doi 
by; and, if she be wronged, she wrongs in return if 
robbed of her rights at home, she robs others of their rigi- i 
abroad. Quiet in any state of things is not in the natu ^ 
of the French. In a free government, or any approach 
to a free government, they must have the fever and ex- 
cesses of factions ; and, when they put their necks under 
the yoke, it must be to drag the car of victory over the 
independence and rights of other nations. These propen- 
sities have no great permanence it is true ; they get tired 
of constitutional strife ; they get tired of military rule and 
renown ; sick of liberty, sick of glory, and they fly from the 
one to the other. The French are charged with a passion 
for novelty, but their novelties are antiques. At one time 
they return to the old fashion of liberty, equality, and 
fraternity, and anon to the tyranny of half a century ago. 
Glory was the passion to which Napoleon pandered ; the 
Army panted for it, the nation accepted it in return for its 
blood and treasure : but the time soon came when the 
Army as well as the nation, smeared with gore, surfeited 
with glory, cried out for peace, and so that desolating 
career came to an end. The turn for the parody is now 
come, and the only question is, how long the drama will 
last. The Army must have employment, and the Army 
will get tired of its employment, as it did before ; it must 
obtain booty, and, the booty obtained, it must have peace 
and the retreat for the enjoyment of it ; and then the im- 
pediment to both must be cast away as before. 

But Europe may get tired of these repetitions, of which 

D D 



402 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

Trance is never weary, and may be provoked, upon mighty 
aggressions, to take measures disabling France from the 
disturbance of its repose. If France plunges into war to 
make herself greater than she is, she may chance to end 
by finding herself smaller, and not one and indivisible. 

The tyranny of M. Bonaparte's government continues 
unabated, unmitigated. He has by his own showing got 
the vast majority of the nation as ten to one with him, 
and he is acting as if it were as ten to one against him. 
He renders up a Te Deum, a thanksgiving to Heaven for a 
state of things that requires in his view the suppression of 
the Press, of the liberty of thought and deliberation, of the 
course of justice, and of the independence of its ministers. 
Either the election is a fraud and falsehood of the most 
enormous magnitude, or the tyranny is the most unpro- 
voked and wanton that has ever yet had existence, not ex- 
cepting the worst periods in the history of degenerate Eome. 
—(1851.) 

THE DREAM. 

The Czar has had a dream. His patron saint, Saint 
Nicholas, the patron saint of thieves, who are thence 
called St. Nicholas's clerks, appeared to him four nights 
consecutively, to sound his intentions as to Turkey and 
the motives of the crusade. The saint, it seems, did not 
know what to make of his man ; and it was not till the 
Emperor waxed wroth at his distrustful questionings, and 
actually swore at the saint, that the latter became satis- 
fied that the orthodox faith, and no hankering for some 
little territorial gains, was the only motive for the war. 
As dreams, however, go by contraries, the conclusion 
must be anything but satisfactory to St. Nicholas, who, 



FOREIGN POLITICS. 403 

though the patron of thieves, cannot approve of such 
outrageous robbery as that contemplated by his protege, 
especially under the hypocritical pretence of religion, 

It is reported that there has since been another dream, 
in which the saint called for an account of the booty of 
Sir Hamilton Seymour's property, with which the Czar 
has so nobly enriched himself The saint is rumoured to 
have asked the Emperor what sort of faith, orthodox or 
other, was concerned in this transaction, and whether it 
was with a purely religious object that His Majesty seized 
the late Ambassador's goods and chattels. — (1854.) 

THE PORTENTOUS SILENCE. 

On Wednesday Count Walewski gave a grand dinner to 
the members of the Congress, the Diplomatic Corps, and 
the French Cabinet. At the dessert he announced his 
intention to propose a toast with a peculiar solemnity of 
manner. In a short speech he said that he drank to the 
duration of the Peace they had just signed, humiliating 
to none, honourable to all. The toast was drank ; but 
no one spoke. The company looked at Lord Clarendon ; 
he was silent. They looked at Count Orloff; he was 
silent. About this famous Peace all kept their peace. The 
effect must have been like that which Scott describes in 
the 'Antiquary' at Steenie's funeral, when Elspeth gives the 
horrifying toast, ' Often may we have such merry meet- 
ings.' Paris has been full of speculation as to the porten- 
tous silence following the toast. Was it anyone's busi- 
ness to speak ? Perhaps not. Or who was to speak first, 
if responses were due? Or was it that the task was too 
difficult ? When little Isaac asks Carlos to say something 

D D 2 



404 FOREIGN POLITICS. 

civil to the Duenna, he observes, ' Faith, Isaac, your mis- 
tress is difficult to compliment.' And perhaps each mem- 
ber of the Congress felt this sort of perplexity, and that 
the least said was soonest mended. Pericles said of 
women that silence was their best ornament, and this 
fair peace may, like the sex, be set off to the best ad- 
vantage when nothing is said about it. We admire the 
discretion of Count Walewski's guests. Sufficient for the 
day is the evil thereof, and, when the time comes that the 
Peace must be talked of, there will be no peace. How 
much then will the safe silence of Count Walewski's table 
be regretted. — (1856.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 405 



CHAPTEE VI. 
SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



SIGNS OF CIVILISATION. 

The traveller in a strange land, when he saw a gibbet, 
congratulated himself on being in a civilised country ; 
and, when we meet with hypocrisy and falsehood in the 
State paper of a barbarous and despotic Power, we 
consider them as infallible indications of a right royal 
progress in cabinet refinement and the business of king- 
craft. In the social system all things improve together ; 
and, as the people make advances towards intelligence, 
their masters become accomplished in knavery. In a 
rude state the despot strikes, but speaks not, and hears 
not. But, as his subjects acquire notions that they have 
a property in their own heads, he finds it expedient to 
give a colour to violence, and, like Iago, is compelled 
to adduce reasons for murder. In proportion to the 
civilisation of its people, a good government may deal 
frankly and openly with them ; in proportion to the 
advancing intelligence of its people, a bad one must deal 
craftily and falsely with them . — ( 1827.) 



406 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



A RELIGIOUS SULTAN. 

Gulliver remarked that the King of Lilliput, who was, 
we all know, the very pattern of an accomplished prince, 
never commenced any extraordinarily bloody massacre of 
his people without expatiating on his clemency and 
insisting on their happiness in living under a monarch 
mild and compassionate to a foible. This is the custom 
too of European Potentates, a dissertation on mercy and 
forbearance being the sure forerunner of an approaching 
tragedy. The Sultan has adopted this formula. Like 
the Legitimates too, he has not failed to identify his cause 
with religion, and has made a most efficient use of the 
Deity, by placing him in the very front of the battle. If 
the people disobey him, ' they revolt against the com- 
mands of God himself.' If they speak ill of his Govern- 
ment, ' they circulate lies among crowds and gossips, void, 
like themselves, of all due sense of religion.' — (1827.) 

THE UNPAID MAGISTRACY. 

The Frenchman, according to Joe Miller, having 
observed that an Englishman recovered from a fever 
after eating a red herring, administered one to the first 
of his fellow-countrymen whom he found labouring under 
that disease, and, having found that it killed him, noted 
in his tablet that a red herring cures an Englishman of 
a fever, but it kills a Frenchman. So we must note, 
according to the 'Edinburgh Beviewer,' that pay is 
wholesome for Judges in town, but it is bad for Judges 
in the country.— -(1827.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 407 



THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AT HOME. 1 

The Duke of Wellington generally rises at about eight. 
Before he gets out of bed he commonly pulls off his 
nightcap, and while he is dressing he sometimes whistles 
a tune, and occasionally damns his valet. The Duke of 
Wellington uses warm water in shaving, and lays on a 
greater quantity of lather than ordinary men. While 
shaving he chiefly breathes through his nose, with a view, 
as is conceived, of keeping the suds out of his mouth ; 
and sometimes he blows out one cheek, sometimes the 
other, to present a better surface to the razor. When he 
is dressed he goes down to breakfast, and while descend- 
ing the stairs he commonly takes occasion to blow his 
nose, which he does rather rapidly, following it up with 
three hasty wipes of his handkerchief, which he instantly 
afterwards deposits in his right-hand coat pocket. The 
Duke of Wellington's pockets are in the skirts of his 
coat, and the holes perpendicular. He wears false hori- 
zontal flaps, which have given the world an erroneous 
opinion of their position. The Duke of Wellington 
drinks tea for breakfast, which he sweetens with white 
sugar and corrects with cream. He commonly stirs the 
fluid two or three times with a spoon before he raises it 
to his lips. The Duke of Wellington eats toast and 
butter, cold ham, tongue, fowls, beef, or eggs, and some- 
times both meat and eggs ; the eggs are generally those 
of the common domestic fowl. During breakfast the 

1 This paper was written in ridicule of some very circumstantial and absurd 
accounts of the Duke of Wellington's habits, which appeared in the news- 
papers upon his Grace's accession to power in 1828. 



408 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Duke of Wellington has a newspaper either in his 
hand, or else on the table, or in his lap. The Duke of 
Wellington's favourite paper is the ' Examiner. ' After 
breakfast the Duke of Wellington stretches himself out 
and yawns. He then pokes the fire and whistles. If 
there is no fire he goes to the window and looks out. 
At about ten o'clock the General Post letters arrive. The 
Duke of Wellington seldom or never inspects the super- 
scription, but at once breaks the seal and applies himself 
to the contents. The Duke of Wellington appears some- 
times displeased with his correspondents, and says pshaic, 
in a clear, loud voice. About this time the Duke of 
Wellington retires for a few minutes, during which it is 
impossible to account for his motions with the desirable 
precision. At eleven o'clock, if the weather is fine, the 
Duke's horse is brought to the door. The Duke's horse 
on these occasions is always saddled and bridled. The 
Duke's horse is ordinarily the same white horse he rode 
at Waterloo, and which was eaten by the hounds at 
Strathfieldsaye. His hair is of a chestnut colour. Before 
the Duke goes out, he has his hat and gloves brought 
him by a servant. The Duke of Wellington always puts 
his hat on his head and the gloves on his hands. The 
Duke's daily manner of mounting his horse is the same 
that it was on the morning of the glorious battle of 
Waterloo. His Grace first takes the rein in his left hand 
which he lays on the horse's mane ; he then puts his left 
foot in the stirrup, and with a spring brings his body up, 
and his right leg over the body of the animal by the 
way of the tail, and thus places himself in the saddle ; 
he then drops his right foot into the stirrup, puts his 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 409 

horse to a walk, and seldom falls off, being an admirable 
equestrian. When acquaintances and friends salute the 
Duke in the streets, such is his affability that he either 
bows, touches his hat, or recognises their civility in some 
way or other. The Duke of Wellington very commonly 
says, ' How are you ? ' — ' It's a fine day ' — ' How d'ye 
do ? ' — and makes frequent and various remarks on the 
weather, and the dust or the mud, as it may be. At twelve 
o'clock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the Duke's 
master comes to teach him his political economy. The 
Duke makes wonderful progress in his studies, and his 
instructor is used pleasantly to observe that c the Duke 
gets on like a house on fire.' At the Treasury the Duke 
of Wellington does nothing but think. He sits on a 
leathern library chair, with his heels and a good part of 
his legs on the table. When thus in profound thought, 
he very frequently closes his eyes for hours together, and 
makes an extraordinary and rather appalling noise through 
his nose. Such is the Duke of Wellington's devotion to 
business that he eats no luncheon. In the House of 
Lords the Duke's manner of proceeding is this: he 
walks up to the fire-place, turns his back to it, separates 
the skirts of his coat, tossing them over the dexter and 
sinister arms, thrusts his hands in his breeches' pockets, 
and so stands at ease. The characteristic of the Duke's 
oratory is a brevity the next thing to silence. As brevity 
is the soul of wit, it may confidently be affirmed that in 
this quality Lord North and Sheridan were fools compared 
with him.— (1827.) 



410 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE WOODEN HEADS OF OLD ENGLAND . 

If it be the constitutional policy of this country to 
maintain the Aristocracy and Magistracy, it is also the 
policy of this country to maintain them in the manner 
least onerous or detrimental to itself. The end being 
avowed and agreed on, the directest means will be the 
best ; and it will be wiser to vote a yearly supply in 
pounds, shillings, and pence for the maintenance of the 
Aristocracy and Magistracy of these realms, than to keep 
them by means of a tax on bread, which cramps 
the industry of the country. Let the Aristocracy and 
Magistracy take their place in the estimates with the 
Army and Navy ; let money be voted for so many lords 
and so many squires a year, and country-houses be built, 
repaired, or fitted and found, like ships. No one surely 
will grudge a few millions for the support of the 
wooden heads of Old England ! If it be declared that 
we must take our masters into keeping, in God's name 
let us do it openly and directly, and maintain them 
according to their wants. Mr. Goulburn, in this case, 
will come down to the House, and show that Squire 
Western is so reduced in his fortunes as to be unable to 
afford a pack of hounds ; whereupon the Commons will 
vote him the dogs necessary to the Constitution, inasmuch 
as they are necessary to the squire's credit. Or he will 
set forth that Lord Squander cannot keep a mistress, as 
he greatly desires to do, and as his ancestors have done 
before him ; whereupon Parliament will vote him the 
wherewith for a concubine. One man cannot drink 
claret, another is sunk below champagne ; various are 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 411 

the dilapidations in the estate of the Aristocracy and 
Magistracy, and the country must repair them, according 
to the ministers, but not, we say, by a tax on bread. 
Substitute, in the place of it, the immediate process of a 
demand on the public purse. Let the wants of lords and 
squires be spread before us, hounds, horses, concubines, 
claret, champagne, &c. ; and the estimates to supply them 
shall be regularly discussed and voted, like those, as we 
have before said, of the Army and Navy. The advantage 
of this mode over the present method of maintaining the 
Aristocracy and Magistracy, or, in other words, of keep- 
ing our masters, is manifest. By way of illustration — 
George Barnwell perceived it to be necessary to his 
constitution to keep a mistress : but, for lack of a direct 
supply from his old-fashioned uncle for so requisite and 
respectable an appurtenance, he robbed the shop, and 
ultimately cut his kinsman's throat, just as the man killed 
the goose to get the golden eggs, or as the squires kill 
this country to keep up the price of their corn. If 
Barnwell's uncle had been distinctly told by a neighbourly 
Mr. Peel that it was absolutely necessary that his nephew 
should maintain Millwood, none of this mischief would 
have happened. The robbery would have been avoided ; 
also the personal inconvenience of assassination to the 
sufferer. What was requisite for Millwood's ' dresses and 
decorations,' as the play-bills have it, would have 
been considered, and the damage would not have 
exceeded the occasion. The present method of keeping 
our Millwood is attended with this obvious mischief, that 
the cost of the maintenance of the hussy is more than 
proportioned to her wants. Our Constitution requires 



412 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

that squires and lords should be supported ; but squires 
and lords need support in different degrees : some need 
it very little ; some very much ; and some, again, not at 
all. How stupid it is, then, to give to these various claims 
and conditions one measure of supply ! What a manifest 
offence against economy! As Lord Eldon would say, 
6 God forbid ' that we should dispute with Mr. Peel the 
propriety, fitness, and constitutional policy of starving the 
people for the good of the Aristocracy and Magistracy ; 
all that we contend is, that they should be pinched with 
discretion, and that a judicious manner of picking pockets 
should be substituted for the practice of taking the bread 
out of their mouths. In the name of Heaven, feed them 
and fleece them. Bruce, the traveller, tells us of a people 
who, to appease their hunger, had a custom of cutting 
slices from the rumps of their beasts of burthen, and 
then driving them on again, as if nothing disagreeable to 
the brutes had happened. This is not perfectly tender 
treatment, but it is wiser in point of policy than preying 
on the beasts' fodder. We wish those gentlemen who are 
said to have stakes in the country would just be good 
enough to take their slices from its fat places, instead of 
interrupting the in-goings at the mouth of the beast. 
Better to bleed than to starve. We can trot on, too, after 
a good deal of crimping : but our constitutions suffer 
grievously from inanition. — (1827.) 

MELANCHOLY CASE OF A DUKE. 

An uncommon case puzzled the Faculty some years 
ago. A worthy gentleman in vigorous health, and having 
the organs of sight in excellent perfection for all objects 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 413 

but one, complained of a distressing inability to read 
even the largest print that was set before him. Many 
were the learned theories propounded in explanation of 
this curious defect ; and, after the patient had had his 
eyes all but poked out by the various oculists, some 
commonplace person asked him whether he had ever 
learnt to read, a question which he, with great simplicity, 
resolved in the negative, and thus explained the problem 
which had so greatly perplexed the learned. 

The Duke of complains, with similar naivete, that 

he cannot collect his ideas when he addresses the Noble 
House. Alack, alack ! my Lord Duke, ' the Spanish fleet 
you cannot see, because it is not yet in sight/ The ideas 
the honest Nobleman would collect are not yet born of 
the brain. De non existentibus et de non apparentibus 
eadem est ratio, says the law maxim. — (1827). 

LORD ELDOtf. 

What a consistent career has Lord Eldon's been — 
the ever-active Principle of Evil in our political world ! 
In the history of the universe no man has the praise of 
having effected so much good for his fellow-creatures as 
Lord Eldon has thwarted.— (1827.) 

ROGUES OF CUSTOM. 

The same cause which makes men, brave individually, 
fly in mobs, makes even the well-disposed rogues of 
custom in the world. Hazards and sacrifices must be 
mutual, or rare indeed is the virtue to undergo them. 

An anecdote may illustrate the position. The monkeys 
in Exeter 'Change used to be confined in a line of narrow 



414 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

cages, each of which had a pan in the centre of its front 
for the tenant's food. Chancing to be present one evening 
at supper- time, we observed that, when all the monkeys 
were supplied with their messes, scarcely any one of them 
ate out of his own pan. Each thrust his arm through 
the bars, and robbed his right or left-hand neighbour. 
Half what was so seized was spilt and lost in the con- 
veyance ; and, while one monkey was so unprofitably 
engaged in plundering, his own pan was exposed to 
similar depredation. The mingled knavery and absurdity 
was shockingly human. Had a Monkey Eeviewer, how- 
ever, admonished the tribe of the aggregate of loss to 
the simial stomach, and beseeched them to commence 
the reform of honesty each on himself, what monkey 
would have had sufficient reliance on his neighbour's 
virtue to commence the virtue of forbearance ? Placing 
the cages more apart seemed the more rational scheme of 
reform.— (1827.) 

ROAST PIG WITHOUT FIRING THE HOUSE. 

Charles Lamb, in one of his pleasantest papers, tells 
us that roast pig was first tasted by mankind after a fire 
in which some sucklings had been burnt, and that the 
people among whom this happy accident occurred having 
thence got a strong taste for roast pork, and being 
strictly observant of precedent, set a house on fire when- 
ever they wanted to roast a pig. For ages this custom 
was continued ; but at last the expense and terror of the 
conflagrations became so grievous that one of those great 
spirits, which are born of the emergencies of nations, 
rose up and suggested that pig might be roasted without 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 415 

setting a house on fire. At first there was prodigious 
murmur at the innovation, and it was said that the 
necessity of setting a house on fire for a dish of pork 
was a salutary check to any excess of pig ; but the great 
bulk of the people who could not afford to burn down 
their houses once a month, and who suffered from the 
alarm and tumult of frequent conflagrations, supported 
the reform proposed by the sage, and pigs were thence- 
forth roasted by fires brought within the limits of grates 
and under control. 

Now it seems to us high time that we should have our 
roast pig without setting the house on fire. A conflagra- 
tion for every suckling of improvement with which the 
nation proposes to treat itself appears to us a most bar- 
barous and expensive method of accomplishing the object. 
—(1827.) 

AN OLD TORY CRY. 

When Don Magnifico, in ' Cinderella/ is striving to 
squeeze his tyrannical daughter's splay foot into the glass 
slipper, he exultingly exclaims, ' Tis done ! 'tis done ! — 
all but the heel' 

Such is the perpetual cry, and the degree of success of 
the Tory party. ' 'Tis done, 'tis done ! — all but the heel.' 
They have got their foot in office, all but the heel. Sir 
Henry Hardinge's motion fitted the House of Commons 
all but the heel. It only wanted 36 of a success, tri- 
umphantly said the Tory Magnificos, such being the 
length of the long heel but for which the foot was in, and 
the thing done. 

Well it is that the heel is out, for it is a heel that would 
trample on liberty in every part of the world, the heel 



416 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

which everywhere leaves the print of despotism, the heel 
of the arch foe of mankind. — (1827.) . 

BILL-STICKERS BEWARE ! 

Horrors had come so thickly upon us lately that we 
knew not what might not be apprehended. The question 
was 

What is the newest grief? 
That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker ; 
Each minute teems a new one. 

First there was the parting with the Eoyal stud ; then 
there was the Queen's not parting with her Eoyal mother; 
then Her Majesty's dinners ; then Lord Durham's plates 
and dishes ; then the Coronation fixed for the anniversary 
of some one's death ; and, lastly, to crown all, Sir James 
South, from his observatory, and by virtue of one of his 
powerful telescopes, discovers a tyranny that would not 
be borne in the dominions of the Eussian Autocrat, and 
a martyrdom the most grievous ever known. 

Bleed, bleed, poor country ! 
Great Tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, 
For goodness dares not check thee. 

But, as Quidnunc says in the farce, ' How are we ruined 
— how are we ruined ? ' We must come to the fact. The 
terrible truth must out. ' An individual ' (as Sir James 
South beautifully expresses it) ' has been consigned to 
captivity' for posting up bills to call a meeting to oppose 
the Hippodrome. Here, then, is the monstrous tyranny 
which would not be borne in Eussia, and this bill-sticker 
is the martyr the greatest ever heard of. A blow has 
been struck at the liberty of bill-sticking ; and observe 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 417 

how artfully it has been done at the moment of the recess, 
and when Lord Chandos has not the opportunity in his 
place in Parliament of bringing the great bill-sticking 
question and the oppression of the martyred bill-sticker 
before the supreme tribunal of the nation. The plot has 
been long hatching : there is the handwriting on the wall 
in proof of its premeditation, in the emphatic words, 
'Bill-stickers beware.' — (1838.) 

crushing necessary to mental elevation. 
There are, says Lord Bacon, some natures which, like 
aromatic plants, do not give out their finer qualities till 
they be crushed, a thought rendered by Leigh Hunt in 
the simile — 

Like crushed perfumes exhaling to the skies. 

So by crushing people well it is amazing to what a mood of 
mind you raise them. A police officer insolently says to a 
man, ordinarily of irritable temper and apt to resist, ' Sir, if 
you attempt to go out of your line I will take you up ;' but, 
when well crushed, instead of firing up against the threat, 
the sinking man meekly responds — ' I wish you would 
take me up ; be as good as your word and I will thank 
you ; and, while you are about it, by virtue of your office, 
take up this poor lady too.' — (1838.) 

PLAN FOR THE PARTITION OF GREAT BRITAIN. 

For belief in the genuineness of a document called 'The 
Confederation of Gaul, a Confederation of Gulls was ab- 
solutely requisite, which the ' Times ' has kindly endea- 



voured to bring about. 



E E 



418 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

' The subject is of fearful importance, being the develop- 
ment of a plan for the partition of France ! ' How the 
Quidnuncs must have quaked at so terrible a preface, 
which reminds us of that sublime passage in c Tom Thumb/ 
where Noodle rushes in big with the news that the giant- 
killer has been swallowed by a red cow, just as France 
might be devoured by Eussia. Noodle begins like the 
< Times,' 

Oh monstrous, dreadful, terrible ! Oh ! on ! 

The King, upon this, naturally asks, what the readers of 
the ' Times ' must have asked when they read the fee-fa- 
fum introduction above quoted, 

What means the blockhead ? 

Noodle rejoins, as the Editor of the ' Times ' might do, 

But to grace my tale ivith decent horror ; 

A huge red cow, larger than the largest, just now i' the open street, 

Before my eyes devoured the great Tom Thumb. 

The case is not quite so bad as this. The great Tom 
Thumb is not devoured ; the worst is a plan to eat him 
up, approved by a red cow, or horned cannibal, as the 
great Merlin terms her. 

About the authenticity of this document ' of fearful 
importance ' we think it unnecessary to say one word : 
but there will shortly be published a plan for the parti- 
tion of Great Britain, being a copy of a diplomatic paper 
taken at St. Petersburg in 183G from an original docu- 
ment in the secret archives of the Russian Court, in 
which it will be proposed to surrender the Isle of Thane I 
to the Tope; to give the rest of Kent and the whole of 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 419 

Surrey to Colonel Sibthorp, under the name of the king- 
dom of East Anglia, the capital of the same being St. 
George's Fields ; France to be content with that part of 
Westminster naturally destined for her, called Petty 
France ; St. James's parish to be a republic ; the Seven 
Dials also to be republics, and their Diet to be held in 
the street of that name ; Her Majesty Queen Victoria to 
enjoy for herself the title of Queen of Pimlico, her resi- 
dence being fixed in the palace of the same, and her 
dominions bounded to the east by the iron-railing, to the 
north by Constitution Hill, to the west by Grosvenor 
Place, and to the south by Arabella Kow. The Emperor 
of Eussia will be contented with the pig-tail statue of 
George the Third in Cockspur Street. Considering the 
services which the Duke of Wellington, in his long career, 
has rendered to the peaceful policy of the Holy Alliance, 
and to all the monarchs who have governed England 
for eighty years, Strath fielclsaye is to be erected into an 
independent state. He is to possess it as sovereign, he 
and his descendants, if it shall please him, by forming a 
new matrimonial alliance, to procure male successors. 

Such are a few of the particulars of a document which, if 
genuine, will make Europe roar — with laughter. — (1838.) 

SIR JAMES GRAHAM ON PROTESTANTISM. 

Since when has Protestantism been the religion of our 
fathers ? Only since the Eeformation, which would never 
have taken place had the Wickliffes and Luthers cared a 
straw for what their fathers believed before them. Sir 
James Graham tells his youthful auditors that, ' by the 
proper use of their understandings, they may reach the 

E E 2 



420 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

most sublime heights.' The use he makes of his own 
understanding is to reach the height of the absurdity in 
question. It is as sublime, certainly, as any absurdity 
can be ; but the sublimity has a negative sign, and is the 
very bathos of Tory sentiment. The Lord Hector's eulogy 
of Protestantism reminds us of the well-known anti-climax 
in praise of the celebrated Boyle — 'the father of chemistry 
and the brother of the Earl of Cork.'— (1838.) 

THE STORY OF THE SHERIFFS. 1 

The cry of the enemies of the privileges of the 
Commons is now altered. It is no longer, ' You cannot 
vindicate your privileges ; if you make the attempt, you 
will find yourselves baffled and powerless.' Instead of 
this language the argument now is, 'You have done 
enough for the vindication of your privileges. Be 
merciful as you have proved yourselves strong, and 
release the Sheriffs.' 

No, very properly answers the Solicitor-General, we 
have not done enough for the vindication of our privileges 
till we have protected our officer, and we cannot discharge 
the Sheriffs till the Sheriffs have discharged Hansard's 
£600. We have got the Sheriffs in our cells, and the 
Sheriffs have got Hansard in their pockets. When the 
Sheriffs unbutton we will unbolt. When the Sheriffs 

1 Messrs. Evans and Wheelton, the Sheriffs of London, were committed 
to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms by the House of Commons, for breach, 
of privilege in having levied- an execution upon Mr. Hansard, the Parliamen- 
tary printer, to recover GOO/., the amount of damages awarded against him in 
an action in the Court of Queen's Bench. The imprisoned Shcrills wore 
prominent Tories, and the treatment they met with was made the subject 
of much angry party feeling. — (Ed.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 421 

render up Hansard's we will render up the Sheriffs. As 
yet the Sheriffs are contumacious. 

The situation is like that in the ' Critic/ where all the 
dramatis persona? have their daggers at each other's 
throats, and the uncles daren't stir for fear of the nieces, 
and the nieces daren't stir for fear of the aunts. 

Or, perhaps, an exacter parallel may be found in the 
difficulties of the ' The little old woman who can't get 
home to-night,' in the nursery story, in which the cat is 
invoked to worry the rat because the rat won't gnaw the 
rope, and the rope won't hang the butcher, and the 
butcher won't kill the ox, &c. ; and we are waiting that 
happy stage of unravelment when the cat begins to worry 
the rat, and the rat begins to gnaw the rope, and the 
rope begins to hang the butcher, and the butcher begins 
to kill the ox, &c. — the like of which will happen when 
the Sheriffs begin to refund to Hansard, and the House 
begins to release the Sheriffs, &c. 

We prefer this illustration because in it we see more 
than one exact representative of the persons and institu- 
tions concerned. The rat is obviously Lord Denman ; 
the rope is the symbol of the just due of Stockdale ; and 
' the little old woman who can't get home ' is the City of 
London (to borrow a language aspiring to the dignity of 
the subject) ' in a peck of troubles,' and all, as it protests, 
at a standstill for want of its Sheriffs, with their gold 
chains, court-suits, and picture-coaches. 

The little old woman indeed threatens, through the 
mouth-piece of Lord Brougham, that, if she can't get 
home to-night, she will turn off her Under-Shenfis, and 
strike against serving writs, an event which would bring 



422 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

about that blessed state of things anticipated by the 
poet, 

When debtors at noon-day may walk the streets, 
And no one fear the bailiff or his writs. 

In a word, chaos is to come again if the Sheriffs are 
not released. 1 — (1840.) 



Everyone knows the description of the treatment of 
the goose in training for the pate de foie gras, in one of 
the profound French works on the culinary art. * Placed 
before a great fire (says the author), and deprived of 
drink, the condition of this poor bird would, it must be 
confessed, be painful enough ; but, when he reflects that 
his liver, aggrandised to a size immensely exceeding that 
of all other geese, will be renowned throughout the 
world as the celebrated pate de foie gras, he resigns 
himself to his fate without shedding a tear ! ' 

We need not run the parallel ; we need not show that 
Sheriffs, like geese in more trying circumstances, will — 
when they reflect on the aggrandisement of their names, 
the renown, the celebrity of their foie gras — resign 
themselves to their fate without shedding a tear. — (1840.) 



Sheriff Wheelton has been liberated because his neck 
is short. 

Sir E. Knatchbull having moved for the discharge of 
Mr. Sheriff Wheelton, ' on the plea that imprisonment 

1 Lord Brougham, it seems, was not aware that, in default of the Sheriffs 
and their deputies, the duty devolved on the Coroner. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 423 

did not agree with him, his medical attendant, Dr. W. 
Brookes, was called in, and stated that Mr. Sheriff 
Wheelton had a very short neck, that he was subject to 
a congestion of blood in the head, that his father and 
mother died suddenly, that his disorder had been 
increased by confinement, and that if it were continued 
his life would be endangered. 

Are there any constitutions which do not suffer by 
incarceration ? As strong a case was stated for the release 
of Lovett as for that of Mr. Sheriff Wheelton : but the 
House was not at all moved by the former. The medical 
friends of folks in gaol will always be ready to come 
forward to state that imprisonment must shorten their 
lives, for it is indisputable that imprisonment is not 
salubrious. But then people are not sent to gaol for the 
same object that they are sent to Cheltenham, Brighton, 
and Torbay. 

The House did not examine Mr. Wheel ton's medical 
attendant as to the habits of his patient during his con- 
finement, so as to ascertain what might be referable to 
detention and what to other causes. 

However, the requisites for the defiance of the House 
of Commons are now clearly defined. A man with a 
very short neck and a ruddy complexion may treat the 
Commons with all contempt and insolence, and escape 
with a few days' duress, provided that he over-eats 
himself so as to aggravate his plethoric tendencies. 

Mr. Sheriff Wheel ton's enlargement has been altogether 
his own doing. He has literally burst his prison. As 
some one observed of the trees, that they grew because 
they had nothing else to do. so this Sheriff grew fat and 



424 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

plethoric because lie had nothing else to do but to stuff 
Bellamy's beef-steaks and swill Bellamy's port. Had he 
been on prison-diet there would have been no danger of 
apoplexy. But see what modern martyrdrom is ! The 
stake to which the civic martyr nowadays is brought is 
Bellamy's beef-steak, and the determination which comes 
of it is a determination of blood to the head. 

The City now knows what sort of men to choose as 
Sheriffs for the defiance of the House of Commons. A 
short neck is the first qualification, and with good cooping 
and cramming a determination will be the result, which 
will beat hollow the determination of the Commons. 

Mr. Sheriff Wheelton could have relieved himself from 
the danger of blood to the head by putting his hand into 
his pocket — it was a case for bleeding ; but having to do 
with the good easy Commons he effected his deliverance 
by the threat of Miss Biddy in the ' Fudge Family :' 

I shall die, or at least be exceedingly sick. 

His medical attendant's account of his structure rendered 
him excellent service, and in the contest with the House 
he has won by a neck, and aptly may he adopt the motto 
' Neck or Nothing.' 

But his brother Alderman remains in custody, and, from 
the different treatment of Mr. Sheriff Evans' case, it may 
be inferred with mathematical certainty that his neck is 
as long at least as that of the camelopard, his more 
fortunate colleague having the figure of the camelopard's 
next door neighbour, and opposite in form, the rhinoceros. 

But cannot Mr. Sheriff Evans make some appeal to the 
compassion of the House on the length of his neck, and 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 425 



its unfitness for close confinement, as effective as his col- 
league's plea on the shortness of his throat ? There is not 
room for Mr. Sheriff Evans' neck in his cell. He is 
obliged to live with his head out of window or up the 
chimney ; the unhappy gentleman is obliged to sleep like 
a bird with his head under his wing. He is obliged to 
coil himself up in his cell like an eel in a bottle. He has 
no blood to the head — his head is so far off that the blood 
cannot get there. To adjust himself to the dimensions of 
his prison, he is obliged to tie himself up in a double knot, 
which is a cruel torture to a man whose habitation, to fit 
him comfortably and allow for the length of his neck, 
should be on the plan of the Monument. — (1840.) 



Parents are often heard, in considering the destination 
of their children, to express fears that they are not strong 
enough for certain vocations ; but, if the doctrine which 
we see gaining ground obtains much more head, a 
wonderful field will be opened for pursuits of profit or 
pleasure against the law by persons having the advan- 
tage of bad health. Projects of this sort will then be 
common : — 

' Willy's health is so feeble that I shall bring him up 
for sedition ; he will have a fine field in the Anti-Poor 
Law agitation without any fear of imprisonment. John's 
neck is so short that I hope to see him a Sheriff, and 
intend him to be an attorney in the anti-privilege line 
of business, which, with his configuration, he could 
prosecute without any danger of incarceration by the 
House of Commons. Harry is of so very delicate a 



426 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

constitution that I am almost tempted to make a thief of 
him ; for there is nothing, short of murder, that he could 
not do with impunity, as sentence of imprisonment would 
obviously be sentence of death to him. The dear fellow 
would be sure of every indulgence in felony.' — (1840.) 

THE MAN FOR FINSBURY. 

By an extremely curious manifesto before us, it appears 
that Mr. William Tooke has been moved to become 
candidate for the representation of Finsbury by a com- 
parison between his deserts and those of the sitting 
Members. After an impartial estimate of his own worth, 
and a glance at the utter unworthiness of Messrs. Dun- 
combe and Wakley, Mr. Tooke comes to the conclusion, 
both on spiritual and temporal grounds, that it is 
absolutely essential to the best interests of society that 
he should be elected Member for Finsbury. His pre- 
senting himself is purely a matter of conscience. He 
finds in himself the righteousness exceeding much, 
without which no legislative or other labours can bear 
good fruit ; and, discerning large beams in the eyes of 
the sitting Members, while he perceives his own to be 
without mote, he offers himself purely and solely on the 
ground of his superior holiness. 

His logic is shortly this : Finsbury wants a pious man : 
I am an exceedingly pious man ; therefore I am what 
Finsbury wants. 

As for the deserts of the sitting Members, he glances 
at them as ' unworthy agents,' ' men of immoral and 
irreligious life and conversation,' and ' latitudinarians 
in politics and religion;' and he disposes of them 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 427 

finally in a brace of Watts's verses, one verse for each 
member. 

Mr. Tooke observes that persons of the latitudinarian 
section, in which he classes Messrs. Duncombe and 
Wakley, have never originated any great ' measures of 
mercy,' such as Negro Emancipation, the Factory Bill, 
or the Chimney Climbing Boy Act, for which last Act 
Mr. Tooke claims the glory. 

We confess that this seems to us rather a hard test, 
inasmuch as the ' measures of mercy ' are happily as 
exhaustible as the practices of cruelty and oppression. 

Mr. Tooke had the luck to obtain a position on the 
back of the climbing boy ; and he has risen in the public 
view by narrow, crooked, and sooty ways, and culminated 
at the chimney-top : but what are legislators and aspirants 
for public favour to do who find slavery abolished, factory 
labour regulated, and climbing boys protected by Mr. 
Tooke ? Standing on the pedestal of the soot-bag, Mr. 
Tooke deals rather too hardly with men who have not 
had the fortune to discover a grievance. Let him ask 
himself where would have been his claims if another 
Tooke had anticipated his great chimney-sweeping agita- 
tion ? What would he have been without climbing boys, 
and the narrow, dirty way through which he has ascended 
to the very chimney-pots of the Temple of Fame ? But 
for climbing boys he would have been even as the 
unrighteous, and no better than Mr. Duncombe or 
Mr. Wakley. 

How are those gentlemen to provide themselves with 
the great * measures of mercy ' which may free them 
from Mr. Tooke's reproach? Why even the 'direful 



428 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

dog-cart nuisance ' has been abated. Flea emancipation, 
the emancipation of the industrious fleas so cruelly 
tormented in chains in the Eegent Street exhibition, 
remains certainly to be taken up : but what is one 
question, and that a flea question, between two Members ? 
Had Mr. Tooke entered upon public life a little later, he 
himself might have been glad to show his zeal for 
humanity in a measure for flea emancipation. It was 
his good fortune to begin his career when grievances 
were rife, and when a man might pick and choose 
between blacks, and chimney-sweepers, and a dozen 
other prime oppressions. — (1840.) 

IMMORAL LITERATURE. 1 

Ix Courvoisicr's second confession, which we are more 
disposed to believe than the first, he ascribes his crimes 
to the perusal of that detestable book ' Jack Sheppard ' ; 
and certainly it is a publication calculated to familiarise 
the mind with cruelties, and to serve as the cut-throat's 
manual, or the midnight assassin's vade mecum, in which 
character we now expect to see it advertised. 

Curious it is that the very words used by Courvoisier, 
in describing the way in which he committed the murder, 
6 1 drew the knife across his throat,' are to be found in 
the horrid book alluded to, in Blueskin's murder of Mrs. 
Wood. The passage is this : — 

' Seizing her by the hair, he pulled back her head, 
and drew the knife with all his force across her throat. 

1 In a private note from Fonblanque to Mr. Forster in 1830 the fol- 
lowing- passage occurs: — 'I see "Jack Sheppard" has been dramatised. 
I really think we abdicate our critical duty in not attacking this disgusting 
sort of publication. If you don't, I must ! *— (Ed.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 429 

There was a dreadful stifled groan, and she fell heavily 
upon the landing.' 

As the passions are all excitable through the imagina- 
tion, we look upon this book as calculated to create a lust 
for cruelty in minds having any predisposition to the vice. 
Its tendencies are to familiarise the imagination with 
deeds of blood, and to hold up to admiration the savage 
criminals acting in them. There is often in effects what 
never entered into intention, and we acquit the author of 
having intended or foreseen the encouragement of cruelty : 
but the admiration of the criminal is the studied purpose 
of the book.— (1840.) 

HUMANITY AT SEA. 1 

In the account of the loss of the ' Brigand ' iron steamer 
off Scilly, it appears that the crew and passengers were 
crowded into two small jolly-boats, which, overloaded as 
they were, would not have lived in a rough sea. Surely 
it is high time that dangers of this kind should be guarded 
against by the Legislature, by compelling the owners of 
steamships to provide them with boats fit to receive their 
crews and passengers, and to swim in a stormy sea. The 
expense would be very small ; but sailors would rather 
take their chance of danger than lumber their decks with 
boats. But it is not necessary to lumber the deck with 
boats. Captain Smith's invention of making two large 
boats serve for the cover of the paddle-boxes obviates 

1 The necessity of legislative action to protect the lives of our seamen 
against unseaworthy vessels and the dangers resulting from inadequate 
equipment and overloading was a subject to which Albany Fonblanque 
attached much importance, and the revival of this question at the present 
time gives his views some public interest. — (Ed.) 



430 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

that inconvenience, and his plan has the merit of propor- 
tioning the boats to the size of the vessel. The West 
India steam-packets have been fitted with these paddle- 
box boats, and we believe that the safety of the crew and 
passengers of the shipwrecked 'Medina' was owing to 
them. A Legislature which regulates chimney-sweeping 
may surely carry its care of humanity so far as to prevent 
the loss of life at sea from the negligence of packet- 
owners in omitting to supply their vessels with proper 
boats. But humanity has not yet got to sea. It will 
regulate flues and factories, but it cares not a rush for 
sailors going to sea in rotten ships, or for passengers 
exposed to the dangers of fire and water in steam-ships 
unprovided with boats in case of need. Let any passenger 
on board of a steam-packet look at the one or two small 
boats with which she is furnished, and ask himself what 
would happen in the event of fire or wreck. It would be 
easy to compel passage-vessels to carry boats having a 
stowage for persons proportioned to the size of the packet 
and probable number of her passengers ; but because it 
would be easy it is not done, for the disposition to regulate 
is always inverse to the facility. For this reason the 
Legislature has been so fond of getting up the chimney ; 
and people may now be burnt in their beds because 
Parliament would insist on ordering sweeping in its own 
way, and without any regard to the ways of long-estab- 
lished flues.— (1842.) 

CHARITY ABEOAD. 

It is distance which gives such intensity to the philan- 
thropy, and seldom does the charity which is loud and 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 431 



boisterous and meddlesome begin at home ; indeed, it goes 
so far afield that it does not often get home again. And 
in this there is a convenience, for the humanity which 
concerned itself about the objects immediately around it 
would lose time, trouble, and be called on for some 
sacrifices ; but that which goes abroad and to a conve- 
nient distance has a cheap and easy exercise, and a full 
swing on ignorant declamation. 

There is the Travellers' Club, the qualification of which 
is, we believe, that the candidate has travelled ^.Ye hundred 
miles from home. Let us suggest a Philanthropists' Club, 
with the qualification that the candidate's humanity must 
have travelled not less than twenty degrees of latitude or 
longitude. It should not be necessary that the humanity 
should ever have been at home ; and, indeed, those persons 
whose humanity has always been abroad should be most 
eligible to the sort of Society we have in view. — (1842.) 

ENGLISH WORKS OF AET. 

The Commissioners for the Decoration of the two Houses 
of Parliament have given notice of their intention to in- 
stitute an immediate competition in the undermentioned 
works of art, for the embellishment of those buildings. 
They are to be of the life size, and executed in the usual 
material ; and they will be required to be ready for public 
exhibition at Westminster in February next. 

I. Model of a Minister. — The surface of this figure 
is to be perfectly smooth and glossy, though not highly 
polished. The internal mechanism may be constructed 
of very second-rate or even third-rate materials, provided 
that the whole be thoroughly well oiled. It must have 



432 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

sufficient ability to check the national industry and pro- 
sperity, by the imposition of odious taxes and the in- 
genious creation of a large deficiency in the revenue; 
also to involve the best disposed parts of the United 
Kingdom in trouble, riot, and confusion. Beyond this, it 
may promise to any amount, but is on no account to 
perform anything : or it ceases to be a model. 

Power is to be its object ; in the attainment of that 
end, it must be perfectly reckless. The anatomy of its 
stomach must be formed in imitation of the internal 
economy of the ostrich, as it will be required to digest 
with ease the most stupendous contradictions, and to eat 
its own words without the slightest hesitation. It will be 
expected to raise a piteous cry of c Murder ! ' when there 
is nothing whatever the matter ; and to shed tears for 
itself, after the manner of the crocodile. 

Nothing more is required of this model but to exercise 
its patronage, draw its salary, thrust back its coat, dis- 
play its white waistcoat, and look on pleasantly, whatever 
happens. 

II. Model of a Bishop. — It is, in the first instance, to 
renounce all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. 
The same being an easy task, performed every day by 
common machinery, the Commissioners will require this 
trifling part of the model to be executed in gold, 
wrapped in purple, got up in fine linen, and scented with 
ambergris. 

It is to call itself the Spiritual Pastor and Master of 
the People, and the Physician of their Souls ; and is to 
be publicly prayed for, in the churches, in that capacity. 
In the same character it will be required to make game 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 433 

laws, corn laws, poor laws, and all other kinds of laws 
protecting property against poverty; laws for the build- 
ing of gaols, laws for the erection of workhouses, laws for 
the establishment of penal colonies, laws for the punish- 
ment of popular ignorance, by fine, imprisonment, trans- 
portation, and death ; but never laws for its enlightenment 
by popular education, unless they should directly tend to 
increase its own power and profit. 

When ignorance, want, and misery are at their height, 
this model will enlighten and appease the same, and will 
show its own usefulness as well as that of the Establish- 
ment of which it forms a part, by girding up its loins for 
the discussion of the great question whether surplices 
shall be white, or black, or Oxford mixture. And, in the 
concentration of its energies on this vital point, it will be 
careful to have particular reference to the colour of the 
vest in which the Sermon on the Mount was preached ; 
and to the formalities with which it was taken off and put 
on again during the progress of that service. 

III. Model of the Constitution. — In advertising for 
a model of this exquisite work of art (generally known as 
the perfection of human reason), the Commissioners are 
aware that they open an almost unlimited field to the 
genius and fancy of the competitors ; no man exactly 
knowing in what its perfection consists, or what may be 
its shape, or form, or character, or substance. They 
merely stipulate that it be so constructed as that its 
blessings may continue to be impartially, and without 
distinction of ranks, administered to the many, at the 
discretion of that wise, and good, and admirable class 
of men called magistrates, both in town and country ; 

F F 



434 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

and that it contain the modern improvements of the 
Heaven-born Mr. Pitt, the benevolent Lord Castlereagh, 
and others. They also require that this model have at 
least one hook at the end, for the convenience of its 
being suspended by any Government who may desire to 
contemplate its beauties in that position. 

The prizes to be awarded to the successful models will 
bear a fair proportion to those already enjoyed by the 
successful originals ; and this the Commissioners conceive 
will be encouraging Art in a rather strong and uncommon 
manner. — (1843.) 



6 My eyes ! ' cried an old sailor, on seeing the Nelson 
monument, ' they've mast-headed the Admiral ! ' 

They have, indeed. There he is at the mast-head like 
a midshipman who has incurred the captain's wrath. 

The mast is sufficiently represented by the column, and 
the capital of it is in the closest resemblance to cross-trees. 
There are no shrouds, and for this good reason, that the 
absence of them accounts for the admiral's having such a 
long spell of punishment, seeing that he cannot come down 



again. 



To stick up an admiral at the mast-head is much the 
same sort of thing as putting a grown gentleman into the 
corner with a fool's cap on his head. It may, however, 
be considered as a stern example of the rigour of naval 
discipline. The hero in the naval pillory looks very 
solitary, cold, and comfortless, notwithstanding all the 
benefit of his cocked hat. 

And in this last particular he comes into advantageous 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 435 

contrast with the king below him, George the Fourth, 
who is on horseback without a hat, and with nothing but 
a cloth over his shoulders. 

And mark here how impossible it is to please people ! 
They complain that Nelson has a three-cornered cocked 
hat on ; well, here is a king riding without a hat, and they 
cry what a shame to set a king on horseback without a 
hat, or any covering except his wig. 

The horse is in an attitude of rest, for two good reasons : 
first that, if he moved, the king is sitting so that he must 
inevitably fall off; and secondly, that beggars on horse- 
back proverbially ride to the devil, and therefore kings 
on horseback, who should do the very reverse in the 
direction of Heaven, do not move at all. 

The king rides, as all figures with cloths instead of 
coats on their shoulders do, without stirrups, and looks 
marvellously ill at ease with his legs dangling down. In 
his right hand he holds a large roll of bills (marking the 
time when he was Prince of Wales) ; but it is clear that, 
though he has given the bridle to his horse, he is not 
flying from his creditors. 

The horse has been as much criticised and found fault 
with as if he had been a real horse. It is asked what 
sort of a horse he is like, and we should answer a clothes- 
horse, but for the unfortunate fact that his rider is so 
slightly and insufficiently apparelled. 

A thousand years hence, when the thing is dug up from 
some heap of congenial rubbish, it will be supposed to be 
the figure of a fat ostler with a sack over his shoulders (a 
covering often so worn on a rainy day) riding a horse to 
water. The roll in his hand will be taken for a stick 

ff2 



436 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

broken in the attempt to beat the animal into a pace, and 
the bridle on the neck as denoting the rider's despair of 
any need of the curb with such a steed. 

When the Trafalgar Square monuments are complete, 
the mast-headed admiral, the George the Fourth, the 
Charles the First, the George the Third, all together, it 
will be seen that the happy idea of such grouping is 
derived from Madame Tussaud's Wax- work Exhibition, 
where Mr. Wilberforce is grouped with Fieschi, Lord 
Eldon coupled with Oliver Cromwell, Mrs. Fry with 
Mother Brownrigg. — (1844.) 



We congratulate the Eoyal Academy on its beautiful 
address to the King of the French. It does infinite credit 
to the scholarship and taste of its subscribers. Every 
mind stored with the riches of the Latin grammar will 
at once recognise in it an amplification of the example — 

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, &c, &c. 

To have quoted the original, recondite as it is, would 
have been pedantic; so the Academy did it into Eng- 
lish, inlaying upon it such graces of the language as were 
within the reach of their genius. It is beautiful to ob- 
serve how every substantive is provided with an adjec- 
tive, how meetly they go paired together like gentlemen 
and ladies going down to dinner. 

We will not pay this exquisite production the hack- 
neyed compliment of -saying that it deserves to be printed 
in letters of gold, but we will confidently affirm that it 
deserves to be printed in round-text copy-books. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 437 

The King of the French, with the fine taste for which 
he is remarkable, declared that he wanted no copy of the 
Portsmouth Mayor's address, for that it was graven on 
his heart. What has this to do with the Academy's 
address and the Fine Arts ? Much ; it shows how this 
Prince is in all things given to the arts. Impressions are 
taken off lithographed from his heart. 

If we might hint a fault in the address, it would be 
that of vagueness. It says very copiously that the Fine 
Arts are fine things, but what has been so novelly and 
eloquently written in one sense may have been read 
in another ; the finest of all arts, in the opinion of Louis 
Philippe, being finesse, intrigue, trick, falsehood, and, 
above all, bribery and corruption. To see his doings in 
these very fine arts, go to Spain. 

It is sufficiently evident that the King of the French 
understood the compliments to his countenance of the 
Fine Arts as applying to those which he deems the finest, 
as they are the foulest, for in his acknowledgment he says 
that his satisfaction at the address is increased by its 
:ransmission through Sir Eobert Peel, just as the praise 
of craft would gain by being conveyed through the fox. 

There is one passage of the Academy's address which, 
however beautiful in style, strikes us as of questionable 
judgment. It is this — 

1 We are, Sire, so fortunate as to enjoy the patronage 
and protection of a gracious Queen, ivho generously en- 
courages our efforts and cheers us forward in the career 
of honourable competition ; who, like you, Sire, desires 
to secure for her people the blessings that flow from 
order, freedom and peace ; and who participates with 



438 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

your Majesty in all those exalted qualities which prompt 
you to cherish with affectionate solicitude those interesting 
pursuits which are the measure of refinement in all 
civilised states, which soften the heai% elevate the feeling r s, 
and subdue the turbulent passions of man. 1 

Admitting that there is nothing more eloquent than this, 
the concluding and crowning passage especially, in the 
advertisements of cosmetics, granting that it rivals 
Rowland and surpasses Gowland, excelling them in their 
own styles, out-Eowlanding and out-Gowlanding ; yet we 
doubt the fitness of boasting what was so notorious. 

The Queen was not three days at Eu without finding 
out how artists were treated in France. Her Majesty 
saw them in the presence of their Monarch on the same 
footing socially as the nobles of the land. The King of 
the French could not have been a week at Windsor 
without perceiving that the Arts had the same honour in 
this country, and that Her Majesty's circle was composed 
of all most celebrated in science, philosophy, literature, 
and art, as well as the distinguished in rank. He knew 
that such men as Landseer, Callcott, Maclise, Stanfield, 
Grant, and others were as often Her Majesty's favoured 
guests, as men of similar eminence are in his own Court, 
He was aware that there is no barbarous exclusion of 
genius in any circle in this country, and that in the 
highest place the example of all the graceful liberalities 
is presented. There was, therefore, an unbeeomingness 
in the boast, ' We are, Sire, so fortunate as to enjoy,' &c. 
If our artists had been treated like tradesmen by their 
Monarch, they might naturally have slipped into this 
tradesmanlike language and vaunt ; but it comes with a 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 439 

marvellously ill grace from persons whose honourable posi- 
tion in society has been so notoriously marked by their 
Sovereign. — (1844.) 



It must surely be a principle of architects either to 
choose the worst site for a fine building, or the worst 
building for a fine site ; the good consequence being this, 
that the thing will be condemned and another plan 
adopted, the profession thus getting two jobs instead of 
one. 

The rationale of an encore was well explained by a 
child in one of Matthews' entertainments : ' He sang it so 
badly that they made him sing it again.' 

There are encores in architecture on the same principle. 

The Palace is the extreme exemplification of the art of 
doing the worst for the nation with a view to doing the 
best for the profession ; for in that instance neither the 
worst site for a fine building, nor the worst building for 
a fine site, has been chosen, but both objects have been 
combined ; and the worst building has been placed on the 
worst site. 

In this arrangement there is a certain sort of harmony 
which has, we think, served to defeat the architectural 
interest. Everyone feels that the Palace is very properly 
placed in a hole. Everyone feels that it ought not to 
be seen, that the more it is out of sight the better for the 
honour of the country, and that so poor, so mean a resi- 
dence for the Monarch of Great Britain could not have 
been built on a spot more suitable to its claims to 
attention. 



440 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Had it been placed anywhere where it could have been 
fairly seen, it would have been pulled down long ago. 
—(1845.) 

As it is, it is easy to show how the house can be 
improved, this being the advantage of having to do with 
a consummately defective structure, that no conceivable 
alteration can be for the worse, and that any change must 
be for the better. Patchwork improvements are therefore 
invited, and the Palace will be pulled to pieces and rebuilt 
ten times over, till at last the discovery will be made that 
the site is irremediably unfit for the edifice, and that the 
whole work must be commenced somewhere else. 

The patchwork mending of Buckingham Palace is now 
commencing ; it will be carried on for years to come at a 
vast expense ; and at last it will be found out that a hole 
is not a proper place ' for a palace, and some wholesome 
and commanding spot will be selected. Meanwhile, the 
architects will have plenty of employment ; for this is our 
way of encouraging our peculiar style of architecture, 
that the worse they do the more profitable it is to them, 
as the more they have to do and to undo. 

As the detestable Brighton Pavilion is to be pulled 
down or sold to meet the expenses for the improvements 
of Buckingham Palace, so, in its turn, one of these days the 
Buckingham Palace will be pulled down or sold to defray 
the cost of a better-planned and better-placed building. 

An incurably bad thing is never given up at once. 
Attempts are made at mending, and a series of botching 
must have its course before the discovery is made that all 
the money has been thrown away for nothing. — (1846.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 441 



When John Kemble was asked what he thought of 
Conway (whom some persons mistook for an actor), the 
tragedian replied in his dry, deliberate manner, with a 
pause after every word, ' He is a very tall young man.' 
And this is about the most that can be said of the 
Wellington statue. It is only a matter of measurement ; 
it is very tall, very large, very heavy. The deficiency is 
expression. There is no grandeur, no dignity. The figure 
might as well pass for the figure of a trumpeter as that of 
the Great Captain. Vir noscitur e naso; there is nothing 
'out the hooked nose to bring home the likeness to theDuke. 
The countenance is peculiarly vacant. The horse has in 
every respect the advantage of the man ; there is some 
fire in the expression of the charger's head, but the rider's 
head is under the extinguisher of a cocked hat, stuck on 
as such an utensil is put on a candle. The Duke's nose 
becomes here of great practical service, for it seems to say 
thus far and no farther to the cocked hat. It is as the 
lines on the ridges of Torres Yedras putting the bounds 
to invasion. 

The rider appears too large for the horse. We have 
not a doubt that the proportions are by the foot-rule 
correct, but to the eye the effect of accurate measurement 
is not always truth. Old Astley was of a different opinion. 
He abused his scene-painter for not painting the columns 
of a temple all of the same length, and, when the man 
pleaded the laws of perspective, replied, 'Don't talk to me 
of perspective, Sir ; the public pay their money to see 
pillars according to nature, all of a length, and they shall 
see their full measure, and no deception.' 



442 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

The foot-rule is not the sceptre of art, and the eflect of 
truth to the eye may be marred by fidelity to measure- 
ment. 

But there is in the fault we have noticed a sort of 
harmony with the fault in the choice of site. The rider 
is too large for the horse, and the whole thing is too large 
for the pedestal. It, may, however, be the hidden moral 
of the design to exhibit the great man as too great for his 
position in this small world ; and (according to Juvenal's 
description of Alexander) cestuat infelix angusto limite ; 
which we recommend as a motto for the base, trusting it 
may touch the hearts of her Majesty's Ministers 

To ease the hero's awkward pain, 
And take the statue down again. 

The statue rests on a slip, just giving footing to the 
horse, and no more. It stands, as it were, on a narrow 
shelf, so that it may be said that, having mast-headed our 
greatest admiral in Trafalgar Square, we complete the ill- 
usage of our heroes by putting our greatest captain on the 
shelf. It is a most unhandsome hint to the Duke that it 
is time for him to stand aside, and take his station amongst 
the records of the past. But the execution counteracts 
the design ; for the Duke, seeing how ugly is the look of 
himself in effigy shelved, will take good care not to put 
himself in so awkward a position by retirement. 

And here let us suggest that the statue might with 
excellent typical effect be removed to the gate of the 
Horse Guards ; where it would represent the large class 
of half-pay captains on the shelf, with the motto, cere 
dirutus miles. 

The Duke of Wellington did not witness the raree show 
of Tuesday. His Grace had no notion of living to see 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 443 

himself disgracefully brought to the scaffold opposite to 
his own door. By the by, we heard many encomiums 
on the scaffold, and much praise of the pulleys ; every- 
thing was well done, and no fault found, except with the 
statue and its site. 

It is due, however, to admit that there runs a prejudice 
against the statue through the obstinacy of the committee 
in resolving to place it in a spot disapproved of by the 
general taste. It is hard that there should be a disposition 
to decry Mr.Wyatt's work because some wilful injudicious 
persons have resolved to set themselves against the opinion 
of the whole country ; but, nevertheless, the fact is that 
the statue shares in the unpopularity of the whole design. 
For our own parts we are free to confess that we could 
hardly look at it with patience, thinking of its atrocious 
destination. Our verdict against it is, therefore, to be 
taken with suspicion ; but yet, admitting the liability to 
prejudice, to the best of our judgment we must deli- 
berately repeat our opinion that it wants dignity and 
grandeur of expression. Perhaps this is a miscarriage 
incidental to the colossal scale. Certain it is that, in com- 
paring effects with the statuette of Count d'Orsay, we are 
struck by the fulness of expression, the composure, the 
grandeur, the dignity of the Duke, in the latter ; in place 
of which the colossus of so clever and deservedly admired 
an artist as Mr. Wyatt presents an expanse of bronze 
making us wonder that there is so much of it, perhaps, 
but conveying no other emotion or idea to the mind. — 
—(1846.) 



The Irishman did not know whether he could play the 
fiddle or not without a trial. Lord Morpeth could not. 



444 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

judge how a great statue would look on a little base 
without a trial. Henceforth, in art, as in philosophy, we 
are not to be certain of anything without experiment. 

When judgment shall have been given against the 
statue on the arch, will the question be set at rest ? We 
think not. There is a fair case for another trial. If the 
statue on the arch be disapproved, why not try how the 
arch on the statue will look ? If the superstructure be 
now too large for the base, set the matter right by revers- 
ing the position. At all events, let there be a three 
weeks' trial. In the first instance, the proposal to place 
the arch at top of the statue would not have been more 
preposterous than the other arrangement, and the arch 
now has a fair claim to its turn of ascending. Let every 
dog have his day. There will be a good carriage road 
under the horse's belly, and side footways between the 
two fore and the two hind legs. The Duke with the arch 
on his head will seem to represent the giant carrying off 
the gates of the city, porch and all. — (1846.) 



As, we are told, the Wellington statue is to come down, 
and to take its stand on the parade of the Horse Guards, it 
strikes us that it would be a good arrangement to collect 
on the same spot all the equestrian statues now disfiguring 
different parts of the town, and to put the Wellington 
Grenadier at the head of the awkward squad. They 
would make a rare troop, ' some in rags, some in bags, and 
some in velvet gowns,' some bareheaded with ilowing curls, 
come in cocked hats, some coated and booted, some in 
toga and sandals, looking in their dingy drapery like 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 445 

some ragamuffins riding gentlemen's horses in default of 
grooms. — (1S4G.) 



The Duke of Wellington has expressed his opinion that 
the removal of his statue from the arch where it is now 
misplaced would be considered as a mark of dishonour to 
him ; not that he should so deem it, knowing better, but 
that such would be the general construction put on the 
removal. A more unreasonable opinion than this never 
was given, even by the Duke of Wellington, addicted as 
he is to dogmatising. The only inference drawn from 
the removal would have been, that the statue was mis- 
placed on the arch, or that it was a failure as a work of 
art, and that it was better to transfer it to a site less con- 
spicuous. If there are any people so stupid as to be 
capable of inferring that taking the statue down would 
have argued the decline of the Duke in the royal or 
national favour, their foolish notions could hardly deserve 
deference. 

But, in fairness, the Duke of Wellington ought to have 
conveyed his opinion of the inference that would be 
drawn from the taking down of the statue when it was 
proposed to put it up on trial. He should then have 
said, ' Don't put it up on trial, because, once up, whatever 
the issue of the trial may be, I shall feel bound to object 
on public grounds to the removal, as an inference to my 
dishonour would be drawn.' 

As the thing has been managed, the trial has been a 
manoeuvre for fixing the statue on its mischosen site, 
against the taste of the Queen and all the best judgments 



446 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Once up, it could not be taken down without offence to 
the great Duke. Again, we repeat, he should in frank- 
ness and fairness have given warning of his view of the 
matter when the trial was proposed, which he now sets 
aside and reduces to no trial whatever but an irrevocable 
act. 

The 'Times,' which is sorely perplexed to say some- 
thing in favour of this conclusion, comforts itself witli 
the thought that posterity will see in the statue the like- 
ness of what the great Duke was in the life. If so, they 
will do the Duke the injustice of supposing that he must 
have been a very gawky, vacant-looking person. But 
posterity will not be such a dupe ; for posterity, seeing 
the horse so unlike a horse, will infer that the brass Duke 
was as little like the real one. 

The statue has found favour in the sight of the Duke ; 
and, had the thing been ten times uglier and misplaced, 
the motive for the design would equally have enlisted 
him in its defence, for the art in which he is proficient is 
not amongst the Fine arts. The Duke's arbitrary and 
wayward pleasure, then, settles the question, for the Duke 
is the spoilt child of the Crown and the country ; and if 
he pout, he must have his way upon any irrational plea 
that he may choose to utter, such as the notable one 
that, if his statue were removed to another site, it must 
be attributed to his loss of favour. The keeping of it up 
may be certainly received as a decisive proof of the 
Duke's influence ; but what sign it is of his taste, and the 
adduced reason for it "of his sense, w T e will not say. 
The Wellington idolatry does not lack the Wellington 
countenance, no matter how miscarved and misplaced 
the monstrous effigy. — (1847.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. U7 



THE NEWSPAPER PRESS. 

Our Press is just now ringing with attacks upon the 
Americans for supporting a trade in slander, and with 
what consistency can we throw the stone of this vulgar 
vice, the foul appetite of the craftiest minds, while so 
much of it exist in our community ? It is as much the 
policy of Society to protect the reputations of its mem- 
bers, as to protect their lives, their persons, and their 
properties. 1 — (1842.) 



Queen Elizabeth issued a proclamation, setting forth 
that certain unskilful limners made abominable pictures 
of her Eoyal person, and forbidding any but duly-qualified 
and licensed artists to take her portrait. 2 

We often wish that her present Majesty could extend 
this sort of prohibition to the newspaper accounts of her 
sayings and doings. The sovereigns of England have the 
awkward pain of living under a microscope, and every 



1 In a note from Mr. Charles Dickens, dated November 8, 1842, I find 
this passage : — ' I was very sorry to see in the postscript to the last 
" Examiner " something that careless readers (a large class) will easily twist 
into a comparison between the English and American newspapers. Bad as 
many of our journals are, Heaven knows, they cannot be set against each 
other for a moment, and decency is not befriended by any effort to excuse 
the transatlantic blackguardism, which is so intense that I seriously believe 
words cannot describe it.' — (Ed.) 

2 'If you take up Moore again look at page 33, vol. vi., where he alludes 
to a curious proclamation of Elizabeth, forbidding people to talk of the Queen's 
person or features, or to describe them in writing or otherwise. The pro- 
clamation actually sets forth that u certain limners having done bad portraits 
of Her Highness," it is forbidden for any but u approved and competent 
limners to paint any likeness of the Queen's Majesty.'" — A. F. to Mr. 
Forster.— (E».) 



448 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

little trifle in manners, conduct, and actions is given, 
enormously magnified, to the public eye. 

When foreigners read our Court circulars, Court jour- 
nals, and Court anecdotes, what can they think of us ? 
Do they suppose that we are addicted to the most fulsome 
adulation, or to the most biting satire of our sovereigns, 
for the same appearances would warrant either inference ? 

The courtiers of the Great Mogul shouted out, ' A 
miracle ! a miracle ! ' whenever he uttered anything ap- 
proaching to sense. To give such praise, how wonderfully 
ill they must have thought of the Eoyal capacity. 

The Duke of Wellington falls asleep in the Eoyal pre- 
sence : Her Majesty taps him on the shoulder with a 
bouquet, and smilingly takes his arm, instead of frown- 
ingly taking off his head. What goodness ! what a theme 
for newspaper admiration I How immense was the breach 
of etiquette, and how immense the Eoyal mercy in par- 
doning it and smiling after all ! Can we imagine goodness 
carried further ? Perhaps in suffering the Duke to have 
his nap out. 

One of the Queen's escort is thrown from his horse : 
Her Majesty hopes the man is not hurt, and the pestilent 
newspaper scribbler is in raptures with our Monarch's 
humanity. Why, what in the world else did the stupid 
blockhead expect ? Did he suppose that the Queen 
would see a man fall without caring whether he was killed 
or not, or troubling herself to ask the question? To 
treat the most ordinary virtues as extraordinary in a 
monarch is the very worst compliment that can be paid. 
To praise in the highest personage the traits of common 
humanity, which would pass as matter of course in the 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 449 

lowest, is really the worst insult to the Eoyal character. 
Praise so undeserved is not, as the poet says, ' satire in 
disguise,' but satire undisguised. 

Let us see the case reversed. Her Majesty, being of 
course worse driven than anybody else, was upset the 
other day ; but did the paragraph-mongers tell us with 
admiration how anxiously the postilions inquired whether 
their mistress was hurt ; and is, then, ordinary humanity 
a more astonishing thing in a Queen than in a postboy ? 

This Mogul courtiers' shout of ' A miracle ! a miracle !' 
on every trivial exercise of sense or humanity, is really 
the worst disparagement. The most cutting way of treat- 
ing people as little is to praise them for little. 

The Queen's bounties have lately been handled in the 
same judicious way as her humanities and indulgences. 
But there is nothing that the parasites of the Press can 
touch without an offence to taste. There is likely to be 
an addition to the Eoyal family. How is such a prodigy 
to be told ? Why even so : — 

' The loyal interest attached to our Queen, wdiether 
reigning in her Court, or meeting her Parliament, or tra- 
velling among her people, or seeking the solace of such 
domestic privacy as Eoyalty may taste, will be increased 
if we hint that it is more than probable these domestic ties 
will be multiplied. If we are not misinformed, and we 
are pretty certain we are not, the family circle next year 
at Claremont will be more numerous.' — Court Journal. 

Pah ! an ounce of civet. 

It has always seemed to us that Gulliver, in the adven- 
ture with the monkey in Brobdignag, adumbrated the lot 

G G 



450 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

of monarclis in the hands of adulators. The enormous ape 
had, it will be remembered, snatched up Gulliver and 
carried him up to a house-top, where he dangled him and 
danced him about as a nurse does a child, and crammed 
his mouth with filth out of his disgusting pouch. The 
Brobdignags in the street, seeing the nauseous treatment 
of Gulliver, threw pebbles about the size of the stones at 
Stonehenge at the monkey, to drive it away, forgetting 
that those missiles, though intended for Gulliver's deliver- 
ance, were by no means agreeable to him when flying so 
near his head. 

And so it is that in noticing these fulsome absurdities 
there is always danger that the attempt to check them 
will be regarded • as offensive, instead of the disgusting 
antics, the repression of which is aimed at. 

It has repeatedly been a matter of complaint in the 
newspapers that Her Majesty, in her walks at Brighton 
and elsewhere, has been incommoded by impertinent 
curiosity ; and very proper censures have been addressed 
to the unmannerly offenders. But does not the Press 
itself, in its own way, set the example of the same sort 
of vulgar, intrusive inquisitiveness ? Is it not rather 
hard upon the Queen that she is not allowed to enjoy 
the privacy which is respected in the case of any gentle- 
woman in her own house ? A few days ago we saw it 
pompously announced that Her Majesty inspected (such 
is the great word for small occasions) the joints of meat 
in the larder at Windsor, and a hundred trifles of the 
same sort arc made the theme of ' Court Circular ' and 
; Court Journal ' paragraphs. The mobbing in the streets 
does not seem to us a whit more annoying and unmannerly 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 451 

than this mobbing in the Press. In both there is the same 
low, vulgar, prying spirit. 

To perfect a prison in irksomeness, Bentham proposed 
to make it a panopticon, so that the prisoners should feel 
that there was an eye upon them in every action, every 
motion, every gesture. The Press does its worst to render 
the Sovereign's palace a panopticon, and to subject its 
possessor to the annoyance of constant watching, and 
the ridiculous blazoning of every ordinary word and 
action.— (1844.) 



The verdict for the plaintiff in the action ' Powell v. 
Bradbury and Evans/ in the Common Pleas, is of much 
importance to the safety and character of the Press. 

Mr. Powell, when sub-editor of the ' Daily News,' had 
allowed a law report to be procured and published for 
the gratification of some ill-will which an assistant sub- 
editor (Mr. Wearing) bore to the person whose affairs 
were under inquiry in a Court of Bankruptcy, Mr. W. 
H. Smith of Bristol. Mr. Smith having written to the 
proprietors, complaining that a malicious use was made 
of their paper, Mr. Powell, to whom the correspondence 
of the paper was entrusted, handed it over to Mr. 
Wearing, instead of submitting it to the proprietors. 
Upon discovering the facts and the motives for the 
publication of the report of Mr. Smith's bankruptcy, 
under a head conveying an imputation, the proprietors of 
the ' Daily News ' dismissed Mr. Powell, who brought an 
action for damages for breach of engagement. The Jury 
gave a verdict for £500, decidedly, as it seems to us, 

G G 2 



452 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

against the Chief Justice's charge, and as decidedly 
against the merits of the case. 

It is one of the most sacred duties of newspaper pro- 
prietors to keep their publications free from any spiteful 
or malicious uses ; and we are quite prepared to maintain 
that anyone engaged in a newspaper, who procures the 
publication of a statement or report for the gratification 
of any personal ill-will or grudge, by that act disentitles 
himself to confidence, and consequently deserves dismissal. 
Prudence as well as morality calls for this rule, for the 
proprietors may be answerable for publications as libels 
made with no other view than to wound the feelings of 
individuals. It is no defence, in our judgment, to say 
that the report intended to give pain was ungarbled, and 
a faithful account of what passed. If the motive for the 
publication was not its public interest, but a private and 
malignant one, the truth does not excuse the uses to 
which it was put, and the breach of confidence. In 
questions of libel, it is to be borne in mind that the truth 
is admissible in justification, but is not alone and in itself 
a complete justification; and there are many instances in 
which a truth published for no public object, and for no 
other purpose than to gratify malice and give pain, would 
be punished, and very properly so. 

As we have often had occasion to remark, the corrup- 
tion of money is not the only corruption. There are the 
corruptions of favour on the one hand, and prejudice or 
enmity on the other ; and newspaper proprietors have to 
guard their papers from those undue influences, as well 
as the more vulgar one of mercenary temptation. For 
vigilantly performing this duty, however, we see that a 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 453 

Jury thinks them deserving of punishment. Suppose the 
same Jury had been trying an action for libel, a publica- 
tion of a malignant nature and justifiable on no public 
grounds having appeared in the same paper through the 
misconduct of the acting editors. Would they not in 
that case have held the proprietors responsible for the 
error of the persons employed by them ? Would they 
not have deemed them bound to have taken care that the 
persons to whom they confided the powers of the Press 
were not capable of using those powers for any unworthy 
purpose? But, according to the present decision, the 
dilemma of proprietors seems to be this : if you dismiss 
persons who have lost your confidence, by permitting 
your publications to be turned to the purposes of private 
spite, you shall pay damages : if you retain such persons 
in your service, and you are prosecuted for libel, you 
shall be responsible for having knowingly continued in 
your employment persons capable of perverting the 
powers of the Press to the ends of private and personal 
enmity.— (1847.) 



We have seen with no inconsiderable disgust a hardly- 
worded paragraph announcing that a distinguished noble- 
man and statesman is dying, and calculating the period 
beyond which his fife cannot be lengthened. This is an 
indecency of the Press which is of recent origin. The 
obituary used to satisfy newspapers ; but now, in their 
eagerness to furnish the earliest information, they must 
play the part of the raven, and croak over the dying. 
Imagine the shock to attached friends and relatives at a 



454 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

distance, of taking up a newspaper and reading such a 
paragraph as that to which we have referred, written as 
if no one in the world had any concern in the matter 
beyond the curiosity to know the fact. Surely the Press 
may wait for death, and spare the dying, and the friends 
of the dying, its impertinent gossiping. Or would it 
beseem newspapers to add to the list of births, marriages, 
and deaths, the fourth classification of the dying ? Amongst 
the improprieties of such an announcement as the one in 
question, is the chance of the sufferer seeing the sentence 
of death, and the effect it might have on shaken nerves 
and sinking spirits. But not only what is due in con- 
sideration to the sick, and to the feelings of relatives and 
friends, but also what is due to the character of the Press 
itself, should forbid the intrusion of Mrs. Gamp's prying 
news of the deathbed. — (1847.) 






The tables are turned. The accusers are accused. The 
Press is the bane of the army in the Crimea. ' Our own 
Correspondents ' have lied away the efficiency of the ex- 
pedition, and made it falsely believe itself sick, weak, 
hungry, and naked. The ' Times ' has done it all. As 
a man may be made ill by telling him lie is looking ill, so 
an army may be brought to death's door by representa- 
tions of its jeopardy. Ask a soldier in the Crimea how 
he is, and he will answer that he does not know till he 
sees the ' Times.' Lord Raglan may have inspected him 
hall' an hour before ; but, if the man chances to learn that 
it is noted in the ' Times ' that the face of the general is 
never seen by the men, he fort li with sets down his own 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 455 



impression to the account of spectral illusion. So, too, a 
fellow stuffed to surfeiting with abundant rations, con- 
ceits himself perishing of inanition upon finding it re- 
ported by • our own Correspondent ' that the army is on 
short allowance ; and another, smothered under a load of 
furs, skins, woollens, &c, will be seized with a shivering 
fit upon learning, on the same authority, that the troops 
are in rags. Who should know best, the man himself or 
the c Times ' newspaper ? 

How different would be the state of things if our con- 
temporary followed the example of Mr. Hudson, and 
cooked its accounts, so as to make -things pleasant. 

A slut, rebuked by her mistress for some dirty corner, 
replied tartly, ' La, ma'am, it's not my fault, it's the 
nasty sun, that comes shining into the place, and showing 
every speck.' And this is the retort upon the Press, 
which is charged with the guilt of making the very mis- 
chief which it exposes for the purpose of correction. It 
is the nasty light, discovering blots and foul places. 

We wonder that we have not been told that the reason 
of the superior condition of the French army is not a 
better organisation, and more active care, but simply the 
absence of a free Press. That, however, is but a negative 
advantage ; the desirable thing should be a Press like 
the ' Petersburg Gazette,' which represents all events and 
circumstances according to the pleasure of the Czar, 
pretty much as some of our journals adjust their facts and 
arguments to the credit and satisfaction of Ministers. 

If the charges against the Press be true, the conductors 
of it concerned must be persons of a malignity strange, 
foul, and unnatural, for, according to the accusation, they 



456 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

use the instruments of both truth and falsehood, with this 
detestable discrimination, that the truth is all for the 
service of the enemy, and the falsehood all for the 
discouragement of our troops, and the disgrace of the 
country in the eyes of Europe. Thus it is said that the 
Eussians have learnt to point their guns and shape their 
attacks from the English newspapers, so faithfully and 
accurately do they describe weak places in our hues; 
while on the other hand they so foully falsify the wisdom 
with which the affairs of the campaign are conducted by 
the able and active staff, whose merit is the everlasting 
and exclusive theme of Lord Eaglan's praise. 

There is a little inconsistency in the handling of these 
two detestable faults, or, we should rather say, crimes. In 
one breath we are asked contemptuously, what these 
newspaper people can know of war, and who made this 
or that correspondent a judge of military tactics? but 
presently we hear that these same men are such consum- 
mate masters of the art of war, and such fine critics of 
positions, that the enemy takes his lessons from their 
strictures, and actually lays his guns according to their 
suggestions. Would Lord Eaglan do as much ? If ' our 
own Correspondent ' were to advise that a battery should 
be brought to bear on a certain weak part of the enemy's 
works, would the English Commander-in-Chief forthwith 
recognise the wisdom of the counsel, and direct his guns 
accordingly ? Not a jot, for the newspaper writers are 
only skilful and trustworthy in suggestions serving the 
enenry. They are great strategists in exposing faults on. 
our own side, but presuming blunderers when they pass 
beyond that treacherous ground. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 457 

To make their charge hang well together, we recom- 
mend enraged Ministerialists not to assert peremptorily 
that the c Times ' never tells a word of truth about the 
expedition in the Crimea, and nevertheless that it has 
taught the Eussians how to point their guns with effect, 
for a marvellous chart of the war must that same ' Times ' 
be if it can serve to shape the course of the Eussian round 
shot. And why does not Lord Eaglan take the hint as 
well as Prince Menschikoff ; why does he not throw up 
works, or strengthen works at the points at which the 
Eussians are instructed to direct their fire ? Why is the 
8 Times ' good for the enemy only, and sheer detriment 
to ourselves? 

It encourages the enemy. At Inkerman ' our own 
Correspondent ' was served out to the troops preparatory 
to the attack. Not quite so : it was a thing much apter 
for a Muscovite brain, a dram, the material guarantee for 
Eussian valour. 

It is really despising an enemy too immoderately to 
suppose him such a booby as not to be acquainted with 
the strong and weak places of his own familiar ground, 
and under his own eye, and easily accessible to his own 
spies, to say nothing of deserters. It w r ould be well in- 
deed for our army if its own commanders took as much 
pains to inform themselves of its condition as the Eussians 
are likely to do ; and happy would it be for us if the 
enemy had the use of no other instruments than our Staff 
for that purpose. They would then, indeed, need the 
help of the ' Times ' to tell them what was before their 
eyes.— (1854.) 



458 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



'Put out the light— -and then'? — Some years ago the 
cry was that the power of the Crown had increased, 
was increasing, and ought to be diminished. It is held 
now in certain quarters, high and low, that the power 
of the Press has increased, is increasing, and ought to 
be diminished. The chief offender in this excess being 
the 'Times,' it is proposed, at the particular desire 
of several persons of Manchester, to take measures to* 
compass the destruction of the said ' Times,' or at least 
to cripple it very considerably. But why do this in a 
roundabout way, involving in the injury other. pro- 
perties that are not obnoxious either to Manchester or to 
Downing Street ? Why not set about the object frankly, 
fairly, and directly ? Why not bring in a bill of pains 
and penalties, setting forth the exorbitancy of the power 
of the ' Times,' and that no Ministry is safe under it, and 
enacting what may be thought calculated to render it less 
formidable ? There are various means for this object 
besides those borrowed by Mr. Gladstone from friend 
Bright. The stamp of the ' Times ' might be doubled, or 
it might be denied transmission through the post, or it 
might be forbidden to circulate more than a certain 
number of copies. There have been restrictions on the 
issues of the Bank, and why not on the ' Times,' on the 
same score of State necessity ? What better mode is 
there of strengthening the Government than to weaken 
the ' Times,' which is over it ? If after this deterring ex- 
ample any paper aspires to the power of the ' Times,' the 
proprietors will know what they have to expect, for a bill 
may be brought in to deal with the offender in the same 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 459 

summary way. All that we contend for is the limitation 
of the enactment to the real aim. 

Charles Lamb tells us of a sage people who burnt 
down a house whenever they wanted to roast a pig. We 
deprecate setting fire to the entire Press for the sole and 
separate purpose of doing the ' Times ' brown. Put our 
contemporary on the spit and welcome, provided you 
spare those who do not sin in the same way by over- 
topping the Government on the one hand, and controlling 
agitators on the other. Make an example of the ring- 
leader. Hang him up, or put him to the reformation of 
penal servitude — nay, servitude the worst of all, if you 
will, servitude ministerial — anything rather than derange 
a whole body in order to disable one member, however 
large and potent. Once upon a time, as Eabelais pre- 
faces, when beasts could speak, it was thought a most 
meritorious action to slay a giant ; and there is prevalent 
the same opinion now as to the giant of the Press, which 
is deemed too big to be permitted to live, especially witli 
the prospect of growing still bigger. There is not room 
enough in this broad land for both Government and the 
' Times ;' and, as we must have a Government, however 
bad, we must not have a c Times,' however good. Hainan 
cannot suffer Mordecai in the gate. 

An old fable tells us of an ill-favoured youth who was 
so displeased with his looking-glass that he dashed it to the 
ground and shivered it to a hundred fragments ; but, seeing 
his ugly features in each of the broken bits, he found he 
had made the matter a hundred times worse, and bitterly 
lamented that he had changed the single unflattering re- 
flection for the multiplied. Such is the exact illustration 



460 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

of what Government is about in compassing small change 
for the ' Times.' To kill the giant is all very fine, but it 
is not always pleasant to live with dwarfs. — (1854.) 

HOW TO TELL THE TRUTH. 

It is very easy to say to children : tell the truth and 
shame the devil ; but it is much more difficult to shame 

Lord than the devil, and telling the truth is 

not so feasible a thing to a grown gentleman whose 
education has in that respect been neglected. Children are 
taught to tell the truth ; and to call on Major Longbow 
to tell the truth, without any training in that way, is much 
the same thing as inviting him to play a solo on the violin 
without having learnt a note. 

When Magog the Beadle, lying dead drunk on the 
stage, is begged to get up, he answers, ' It is all very easy 
to say get up, but how do you do it ? ' 

And so with telling the truth. It is all very easy to say 
tell the truth, but how do you do it if you have never 
learnt ? 

If you want to hide a truth, you will bury it most safely 
in the breast of a Munchausen. 

There are men who will betray everything in the world 
but the truth. 

A man full of truth runs over, when a truth is put in his 
mind, just as a full pitcher overflows when more water is 
added ; but a man void of truth has a capacity for holding 
fast any drop of it that by chance may find its way into 
his breast. 

The common expression, that a man has c no truth in 
him/ is very incorrect. The man may have truth in him, 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 461 



but it never comes out of him. It is one of the good 
things that cannot escape from him. 

A famous gourmand laid it down as a maxim that a wise 
man should never carve. If you carve, he said, you are 
obliged to help your neighbour to the best bits ; whereas, 
if you throw the business on him, he must give you the 
delicacies. 

Lord has very discreetly handed the carving 

knife to Lord who, in jobbing, always fulfils the 

Christian duty of doing as he would be done by. — 
(1844.) 

THE EIVALS. 1 

* He is taller, by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his Court, 
which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholder. His features are 
strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his complexion 
olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his 
motions graceful, and his deportment majestic' — Gulliver's Travels. 

Extremes meet. Lilliput and Brobdignag have come 
together. The public curiosity is now divided between 
the rival exhibitions of two foreigners, the one the tiniest 
Eepublican, the other the most gigantic despot. 

Which is the favourite, the smallest or the greatest ? 
We are puzzled between the two advertisements, and 
know not to which the palm should be awarded. 

Expende Annibalem : quot libras in duce summo invenies ? 

The General weighs only 15 lbs. ; his great rival twenty 
stone or more. But let us place the pretensions of the 
two fairly side by side. 

1 With reference to the visit to England of the Emperor of Russia and 
the first exhibition of the dwarf known as General Tom Thumb. — (Ed.) 



462 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



The General weighs only 
151b., is of beautiful propor- 
tions, and smaller than 
any infant that ever walked 
alone ; he wears his Court 
dress at half past 12, and 
again in the afternoon. The 
elegant presents from Her 
Majesty and the Queen 
Dowager may be seen. 
Hours from 11 to 1, half- 
past 2 to 5, and from 7 to 
9. Admission Is., without 
regard to age. 

Owing to the constantly- 
increasing crowds of nobility 
and gentry which attend 
his exhibitions, this man in 
miniature will remain at 
Catlin's Indian Gallery, 
Egyptian hall, Piccadilly, a 
short time longer, exhibit- 
ing every day and evening. 
Joc-o-sot, the celebrated 
North American Indian 
Chief, from the Sauk tribe, 
having recovered from his 
recent illness, will appear 
dressed in the full costume 
of his tribe, with the shaved 
and crested head, &c. Ge- 



The person of the Em- 
peror is that of a colossal 
man, in the full prime of life 
and health, 42 years of age, 
about 6 feet 2 inches high, 
and well filled out, without 
any approach to corpulency 
— the head magnificently 
carried, a splendid breadth 
of shoulder and chest, great 
length and symmetry of 
limb, with finely-formed 
hands and feet. His face is 
strictly Grecian — forehead 
and nose in one grand line ; 
the eyes finely lined, large, 
open, and blue, with a calm- 
ness, a coldness, a freezing 
dignity, which can equally 
quell an insurrection, daunt 
an assassin, or paralyse a 
petitioner — a figure of the 
grandest beauty, expression, 
dimension, and carriage, 
uniting all the majesties and 
graces of all the heathen 
gods. — Letters from the 
Baltic. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 463 

neral Tom Thumb will give 
his songs and dances, and 
represent Napoleon musing, 
the Grecian statues, &c. 

Though 'gainst us men and giants league with gods, 
Yet Thumb alone is equal to more odds. 

We wish, however, that the General had not called in 
the reinforcement of Joc-o-sot, with the shaved and 
crested head. It looks as if he mistrusted the force of 
his attraction in the competition with his Imperial rival. 
The other, indeed, has his backer too, and the King of 
Saxony pairs off with Joc-o-sot ; but we think it would 
have been greater in the ' man in miniature ' to have 
stood alone against the burly Autocrat, and not only to 
have dispensed with the Joc-o-sots, but to have given his 
competitor the following of all the tribe of sots. 

The favour which the General has found in the sight 
of our Queen is well known to all readers of newspapers. 
He has been repeatedly summoned to the palace, and her 
Majesty in the most marked way has signified her appre- 
ciation of extreme littleness. That this is not her 
Majesty's own taste is certain ; but, as she has been com- 
pelled, much against the grain, to give the sway to little 
men, consistency perhaps requires the honouring of little- 
ness, in whatever form it may appear. 

Various profound reasons have been assigned for the 
visit of the Emperor Nicholas, but nothing can be more 
obvious than the jealous motive of it. 

When Dr. Johnson, after visiting the Fantoccini, said, 
' How the little pigmy handled his musket ! ' Goldsmith 



464 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

cried out, ' I could have done it better,' and proceeded to 
go through his exercise with a stick. 

So, when the Emperor of Eussia heard how the c man 
in miniature ' delighted the Queen, he determined to show 
that he could do it better, and that a very great man was 
a much finer thing than a very little one. Should our 
Queen give the palm to his rival, Glumdalca's bravura 
will express the Imperial passion — 

Oh. the vixen pigmy brat 

Of inches scarce half six, 
To slight me for a chit like that 

Ah, Mr. Tom, are these your tricks ? 

The rivalry is rather hard upon Mr. Catlin, whose 
monsters and savages are eclipsed by the Imperial retinue ; 
the latter offering the great advantage of not charging a 
shilling, exhibiting gratis, or for cheers, the smallest of 
which are thankfully received. — (1844.) 

POLAND AVEXGED. 

We show odd lions to the Emperor of Eussia. 

He is taken to the review of about the force that he 
sees guard-mounting in his palace. The troop-horses do 
not stand fire, dragoons are run away with like John 
Gilpin, the great Captain himself cannot command his 
horse ; and, to complete the military farce, the artillery 
blaze and bang away against express desire to the con- 
trary. What a fine display of discipline ! 

He is next taken to Portsmouth, where there is little to 
be seen, a most meagre specimen of our naval greatness. 
He might have run down to Plymouth in ten hours or less, 
where he would have seen a beautiful harbour, in which 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 465 

his whole fleet might manoeuvre in safety within the 
mighty breakwater. 

The method of entertaining him seems as unfortunate 
as that of showing the lions. He hates music, and the 
Queen's piper struts round the dinner-table during the 
banquet, making the detestable noise which for inscrutable 
purposes pipers are appointed to inflict. 

Of a truth the Poles have had their revenge. — (1844.) 

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 

The experimentalist of Hierocles had nearly taught his 
horse to live without oats when the ■ animal died. The 
horse wanted encouragement. Had a prize for living 
without food been in prospect, he would have known 
better than to die. 

We do not despair of seeing the time when associations 
of country gentlemen will be giving prizes to labourers 
for living without food : a silver fork to Thomas Dobson, 
who has not tasted meat for forty years ; a gilt knife to 
another, who has left off bread for half a century ; a gold 
medal to a third, who has discovered the art of living 
on cabbage broth, i. e., the water in which cabbage has 
been boiled, without the vegetable. 

It is amazing how little people can live on if they will 
but try. Franklin and his fellow-travellers on the North 
Pole expedition fared on a pair of leather breeches for 
many days. We do not throw out this for imitation, for 
leather breeches would be too expensive a diet for rural 
labourers, and, if taught to indulge in it, they might 
have a hankering for the Squire's nether garments : 
but it shows what may be done ; and, as gentlemen could 

H H 



466 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

breakfast, dine, and sup on a tender piece of doeskin, 
surely coarser feeders might contrive to make a meal off 
old harness, saddles, and such like. A prize to a labourer, 
aged 26, who had lived a week on an old shoe would be 
of excellent example. A horse-trace might be eaten, like 
Epping butter, by the yard. 

The keys of an old spinet or pianoforte, filed to powder 
and boiled to jelly, would support a man for a long time ; 
and it would be good to see encouragement given to John 
Thomson, field labourer, who had lived on a C natural 
for three weeks. Glue is nourishing diet, but too dear. 

We agree with the ' Times ' that Societies for the Pro- 
motion of Agricultural Industry are as much out of place 
in present circumstances as associations would be for 
the encouragement of great eaters in a besieged place 
short of provisions. 'Too much of water hast thou, 
poor Ophelia.' The misfortune is, that there is far more 
industry than work. 

A society more to the purpose would be one for the 
encouragement of small wages, giving twopenny-half- 
penny prizes to labourers who had worked for the longest 
time on the lowest wages. This association would 
lead the way to the other we have suggested, for the 
promotion of living without food. 

The Societies for the Promotion of Industry have, how- 
ever, the excellent tendency of keeping up a redundant 
supply of labour, as every candidate for the prizes must 
have a large family of children to exhibit and exercise 
his economy on. 

All these children are of course reared most suitably 
for future circumstances. From their earliest hour they 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 467 

have been practised in privation, and in due season will 
compete for employment on the lowest wages. The 
country gentlemen who give these premiums thus lay 
them out at good interest, throwing the sprat to catch 
the herring, for the tendency is to keep the labour- 
market handsomely overstocked, so that wages may 
be low and the labourers well accustomed from their 
infancy to starvation. 

The system of rewarding labourers for living on their 

wretched wages reminds us of Mr. Disraeli's Lady C -, 

who, having stuffed the page under the seat of her 
crowded carriage, gives him a sugar-plum for being so 
good a boy as not to be suffocated. — (1844.) 



As the food of the poor fails, the greatly comforting 
discovery is made that they can do very well without it. 

No one now commits the mistake of the Duchesse de 
Maine, who asked why the people who could not get 
bread did not make shift with buns. Folks know better 
now, and manifest wonderful ingenuity and resource in 
finding coarser and cheaper substitutes for the food 
wanting. 

Dr. Buckland recommends to the poor, in lieu of 
potatoes, the mangel-wurzel, field carrots and parsnips 
that have been grown for cattle, which are to have oil- 
cake as a substitute ; — we almost wonder that the oil-cake 
was not suggested for the people. Others hold that the 
rotten potatoes are, after all, very good eating, and 
nourishing enough, if the prejudice against swallowing 
them can be conquered. For this last object we suggest 

H H 2 



468 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

that rich people should set the example of having none 
but rotten potatoes at their own tables. 

But, after all, are potatoes necessary ? Hesiod laughs 
at the fools who don't know how much more the half is 
than the whole, and what luxury there is in the mallow 
and dandelion. 

Nr/7rioi* ovd' loaoiv offh) tt\bov rjfinrv Tcavrbq 
OvS' oaov tv fiaXaxy re Kai aaQodsXcf) pey ovtiap. 

But a greater discovery than any of these has been 
made. The Duke of Norfolk has found out that the poor 
can live on pickle. Pickling and preserving are words 
that run together in an established conjugate ; and pickling 
and preserving the poor are now, it appears, identical 
operations. 

So the pinch of hunger is to be mitigated with a pinch 
of curry. The benevolent will carry a box of curry 
powder about with them, as snuff-takers carry their snuff, 
and will offer a pinch to such starving creatures as may 
fall in their way. A pound canister will serve for a day's 
provision for the Eefuge for the Destitute, and we have 
not a doubt that the Free Hospital will furnish its porter 
with a four-ounce box to meet current necessities. 

There is nothing like improving occasion ; it is good to 
know that famine, if nothing else can be made of it, can 
be curried. 

Curry, explains the Duke, is made of peppers and a 
variety of things ; but the variety of things we take to be 
superfluous, and it will probably soon be found that the 
pepper is the main ingredient ; and we can imagine the 
time when a rural labourer will be nourished, after a 
day's work, on a pepper-corn. There are pepper-corn 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 4G9 

rents, and why not pepper-corn wages ? Fancy the 
happy peasants returning from the fields, and the good 
farmer or squire putting a pepper-corn down the throat 
of each for a day's sustenance, as old ladies dose their 
moulting bullfinches. What a convenient substitute for 
corn will be the pepper-corn, the very name of it speaking 
that it is both corn and spice. How various are its uses ! 
Put it into hot water, as the Duke advises, and you make 
soup of it, warm and comfortable for a man who has 
nothing better. We prefer the pepper simplex to the 
curry, because there is an idea of luxury in the name 
of curry, which might startle many frugal minds. It 
would sound extravagant that the poor of the three 
kingdoms were living on curries. People whose appetites 
are fastidious, says the Duke, take pickle ; but, if you get 
all the poor of the United Kingdom into this pickle, how 
would you ever get them out of it again ? They would 
insist on currying their mangel-wurzel and field carrots ; 
and the rotten potatoes, palatable and nourishing as Dr. 
Buckland warrants them to be, would not go down 
without the stimulating condiment. We incline to the 
pepper-corn as simpler, more compendious, more safe. 

The Duke of Norfolk, we are aware, may show how 
many applications may be made of curry ; but its season- 
ing powers after all have their bounds, and curried water 
or curried nothing will never be a popular dish, no matter 
what his Grace may vouch in its favour. — (1845*) 



The inquiry into the condition of the labourers at Kyme, 
in Dorsetshire, proves one thing at least, namely, that the 



470 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

stimulus of rewards for good behaviour is wanted in that 
neighbourhood. It is the happy effect of the system of 
rural rewards to turn matters of complaint into matters of 
boast and emulation. There was a time when people 
grumbled at having to bring up families on 7s. or 8s. a 
week ; they now come forward to claim prizes for the 
exploit. The farmer or landlord gets his labour cheap, 
and he liberally gives a smock-frock, or a pair of high 
shoes, to encourage the saving to his own pocket. 

There is nothing that requires cultivation more than 
contentment. People who are scantily or badly fed are 
too apt to complain ; and this propensity can only be cured 
by judicious treatment on the part of their employers. 
This is to be accomplished by making the sufferings 
matter of emulation, and bestowing prizes for pinching 
and screwing. In the austere monastic orders, men being 
held in honour for the pains they inflicted on themselves, 
they vied with each other in the tortures they devised ; 
and, if one wore a hair shirt, another outdid him by putting 
on a girdle handsomely studded inside with spikes. This 
shows what can be done by the spirit of emulation once 
excited. But in this instance it was barren ; no one was 
the better for it. But with the agricultural labourers the 
case is different, for the less they can be got to live upon 
the better for their paymasters. 

At Eyme the people obviously want training. They 
need some rewards to put them in that fine line of ambi- 
tion by which the poor pass through the eye of a needle 
in myriads abreast. 

We beg leave, therefore, to suggest a prize for living 
on the mutton of a sheep found dead in a ditch, the 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 471 

carrion bought of the employer at the price of 2d, a pound 
in lieu of wages ; 

A prize for eating the employer's butter made chiefly 
of fat, the smell of the said butter worse than the taste — 
best with cake ; 

A prize for feasting on the beef of a bullock that came 
to an untimely end by a cancer, which eat up all but what 
was left to the poor, at 2d. a pound ; 

A prize for performing the duty of mitigating the 
farmer's misfortunes by buying and eating the meat of 
his cattle dying of any sickness ; 

A prize for preferring cheese at 2>\d. per pound, not 
distinguishable from chalk excepting that it is not fit to 
score with, nor saleable in the London milk market, it 
being a sort of cheese so alien to the cow as not to be 
available even in the town mixture ; 

A prize for living with the same employer for five-and- 
twenty-years, never having seen the colour of his money, 
on the system commonly called the truck system, but in 
stricter etymology the trick system. 

By virtue of such rewards as these, what are now the 
complaints of the dainty labourers of Eyme would become 
the aims of their frugal ambition, their boasts, and causes 
of honour. Indeed, by a judicious course of training, in 
a few years, instead of hearing grumblings about eating 
butcher's meat at 2d. a pound (butcher's meat lucus a non, 
the butcher having had nothing to do with its end), we 
should learn that the duty of mitigating the farmer's mis- 
fortunes on the death of cattle by sickness, by purchasing 
it for food, was carried to the pitch of virtue of consuming 
his horse, untowardly deceased, or his watch-dog. — (1846.) 



472 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE GARTER. 

Lord Powis, who so sorely defeated Ministers on the 
question of the union of the bishoprics of St. Asaph and 
Bangor, is to have the Garter. 

Calves, and geese, and Peers are secured by tying the 
leg. 

Sir Eobert Peel binds over his Dukes and Earls to keep 
the peace by the Garter. 

And this is quite accordant with usage. The Garter is 
a reward for victory, and it is therefore appropriately 
given to a nobleman who obtained a signal victory over 
the Government. 

Lord Powis beat the Duke of Wellington himself in a 
pitched battle in the House of Lords, and the Duke, in 
consenting to reward him, may say — 

Great let me call him, for lie conquered me. 

There is much modesty in a Government's thus re- 
quiting the merit of its vanquisher. How meekly it 
kisses the rod, blandly praying at the same time with its 
little hands upheld, ' Don't whip me any more.' And 
the Garter secures that. No one with the Garter at his 
knee takes a step against the Government which has so 
bound him to forbearance. 

There is no pacificator like the blue ribbon. When a 
man puts it on, he puts off all troublesome anti-Ministerial 
opinions and pledges. 

The rat-catcher's broad badge is copied from the blue 
ribbon— a most presumptuous figurative pretension, as 
if there were anything in his art of traps and baits 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 473 



comparable with the effect of the bit of ribbon in the 
Minister's hands ! 

Swift's simile of ' blushing like a blue dog ' must surely 
be derived from the wearing of the blue ribbon, for what 
men have such cause for blushing as some of those who 
give up their own honour in exchange for the bauble 
sign of the Sovereign's ? 

1 1 have seen,' says Paul Louis Courier, ' many men 
covered with glory without having a whit the better mien 
for it.' The Garter has sometimes as little effect in im- 
proving a man's figure and carriage. Some of its wearers 
may be seen ever after stooping and "bending, as if they 
looked downwards at it to study and bow to the 
Minister's pleasure. — (1844.) 

FEDERALISM EXPLAINED. 

Federalism is the very first thing that has ever died for 
want of a plan. What other bubble has lacked a pre- 
sentable scheme, something to show on paper? Mr. 
Sharman Crawford, who is as prolific as a rabbit, either 
was or thought himself in labour with a scheme, but 
could not be delivered of it before Mr O'Connell aban- 
doned the thing. Mr. Porter, indeed, has given a pro- 
missory note for a plan, at some months after date, like 
Don Quixote's bill for ass-colts unborn ; and Mr. O'Con- 
nell has Sancho Panza's confidence in the assets in due 
season. 

The French soldiers, jealous of the distinction of the 
corps of Engineers, and holding their scientific labours 
in small respect, lost no opportunity of quizzing them. 
It happened on a march that some of the officers of 



474 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Engineers fell into a deep ditch, and, in answer to their 
cries for help and extrication, the soldiers replied, ' Draw 
out your plan ; we can do nothing without your plan. 
Give us your plan how to pull you out of the ditch/ 

The poor Federalists were in the like predicament. 
Those ingenious engineers Mr. Porter and Mr. Crawford 
being floundering in the ditch, Mr. O'Connell invited 
them to draw out their plan, in default of which he now 
barbarously deserts them. 

There is somewhere a mill for grinding people young, 
which we take to be like the proposed Federalism, re- 
ducing a frame to particles in order to put it together 
again with a more vigorous constitution. 

Medea restored iEson by a federal treatment. She 
cut. him into minced meat, put him in hot water, and 
boiled him up young again. This is what the Irish en- 
chanter would do with the Empire ; he would cut it into 
parts to make the members greater, Hibernice, by making 
them smaller ; the other cooks then propose the next 
stage of the process, that of putting together again, in 
the hot water of the federal kettle, the disjointed parts, 
and stewing them into a new and more vigorous empire. 

Pelias, the head of the Peel family and from whom 
the name is derived with a corruption common to Tory- 
ism, had his limbs treated in this federal fashion by his 
misguided daughters, who made such a hash of it that 
the old gentleman was so overdone that he never came 
out of the cauldron again. 

We supply this explanation of Federalism to clear 
ourselves from Mr. O'Connell's charge of quarrelling with 
a thing without any idea of its nature, and to show that 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 475 

at least we had a distincter notion of what we were ridi- 
culing than he had of what he was espousing. — (1844.) 

RAILWAY MANAGEMENT. 

What Mrs. Harris is to Sarah Gamp, Colonel Pasley is 
to Railways. 

When a railway is completed, Colonel Pasley vouches 
for the excellence of the construction. 

When any accident happens to a railway, Colonel 
Pasley hurries down to see it ; and sometimes he says 
nothing and sometimes he says something ; but he visits 
the spot, and that is a great public satisfaction. 

Colonel Pasley is called in in every case of railway dis- 
order, but he appears to have the advantage over phy- 
sicians, that he does not prescribe. He goes to see, and 
goes away again. 

Of course Colonel Pasley visited the scene of the 
accident on the Dover Eailway. The ' Times ' reporter 
states : 

' Although Colonel Pasley 's opinion was not publicly 
made known, we understand from good authority that 
he attributes the explosion to a flaw in the copper, or a 
defect in riveting the casing. So far as regards the 
viaduct, he has pronounced it to be perfectly safe and 
secure. 1 

Everybody felt wonderfully satisfied with this explana- 
tion, which was as if, in the case of a coach accident, a 
great authority had referred the accident either to the 
linch-pin, or a fracture of the axletree, or the breaking 
of the pole. But the viaduct was pronounced by Colonel 
Pasley perfectly safe and secure ; the reporter, however, 
adds, shortly afterwards : 



476 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

' Eespecting the viaduct, notwithstanding that it has 
been pronounced perfectly safe, it has been found abso- 
lutely necessary to place cross-beams under that por- 
tion where the engine jumped, the heavy cross-trees 
having been broken, and they must be replaced by new 
ones. Up to the present time not the slightest stoppage 
has taken place upon the railway. Although one of the 
line of rails is stopped up, the other is pronounced by 
Colonel Pasley to be perfectly secure, and the trains 
pass to and fro without the slightest inconvenience. ' 

Colonel Pasley is a Mrs. Harris and, as Betsy Prig 
says, ' I don't believe there's no sich a person.' 

There may be such a salary, but there's no such person. 
Colonel Pasley is a figment, a fiction, a fable. Colonel 
Pasley has no more existence than a griffin or dragon, 
and serves, like them, only for a sign. Colonel Pasley, 
in railroad affairs, is like the John Doe and Eichard Eoe 
in writs. There is no kind of evidence of Colonel 
Pasley's reality. In investigations substitute the Man in 
the Moon for Colonel Pasley, and the effect will be pre- 
cisely the same. An accident happens ; the Man in the 
Moon hurries express to the spot, hurries back to White- 
hall, and there an end, to the infinite satisfaction of the 
public. 

The railways have said to Colonel Pasley, 'If any- 
thing should happen to us, you will come and see us ? ' 
and he does go and see them, and that is all. The Man 
in the Moon might do the same in newspaper paragraphs 
to as good purpose. 

But nevertheless, as a Mrs. Harris, Colonel Pasley is of 
great convenience to the railways, in the way of a voucher, 
or approver, and when Colonel Pasley has gone through 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 477 

his veni vidi, and says he is satisfied, all the public is 
content and happy. 

Of such vast and comfortable use is a Mrs. Harris. — 
(1844.) 

The Board of Trade is now to Eailways what the chorus 
of the Greek stage was to the action of the drama. It 
sees what is going on, exercises a judgment upon the 
conduct of the parties, laments what is amiss, is moved 
to horror by a catastrophe, but is incapable of prevention. 
And the similarity holds good in this particular, that the 
enounced opinion of the chorus has not the slightest 
effect upon the action of the piece, which holds its tenor 
under the sway of other motives and laws. — (1851.) 

DUKES AND OXEN. 

The ancient historians who tell us that an ox spoke in 
the Forum never record what the ox said ; the articu- 
lation being the prodigy, and not the speech. The agri- 
cultural Duke of the present day is like the ox of ancient 
times : great importance is attached to his speaking, none 
whatever to what he says. If we could but get at the 
oxen's orations, it would be curious to compare them with 
the ducal ; but the oxen had the advantage of not being 
reported. — (1845.) 

mr. Gladstone's secession. 
A lady's footman jumped off the Great Western train 
going forty miles an hour, merely to pick up his hat. 
Pretty much like this act, so disproportioned to the occa- 
sion, is Mr. Gladstone's leap out of the Ministry to follow 
his book.— (1845.) 



478 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

It cannot be said of Mr. Gladstone as of the nursery- 
hero who devoured his gingerbread letters, that 

He loved good books so well, 
That he ate up his words. 

Master Gladstone loves his book. He loves his Peel too, 
but he loves his book better. He minds his book too, 
and that is more than anybody else does. 

If you would know why Mr. Gladstone went out, read 
his book; he went out that you should read it to know 
why. The book has been out too long to little purpose ; 
Mr. Gladstone goes out to give it a lift. 

There are men who fancy themselves teapots ; there 
was one who used to go about with his arm out, begging 
people to take care not to break his spout. Mr. Gladstone 
is one of those hypochondriacs in politics, and went in 
mortal fear of breaking his brittle reputation. 

We shall become believers in portents. It was but the 
other day that we read an account of a dog committing 
suicide by drowning ; and the narrator declared that it 
showed the dog's sense, perhaps, because if he had been 
mad he would not have taken to the water. 

Eousseau separated from his mistress that he might have 
the pleasure of meditating on her charms, and writing to 
her. The Gladstone separates from its Peel for a sweeter 
correspondence than that of colleagueship. — (1845.) 

THE NEW STAGE. 

There is no Stage ; where are the actors ? is a common 
cry. 

There is a stage which fixes the most eager gaze, and 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 479 

there are actors who are followed with the intensest in- 
terest as they fret their little hour. The stage is the dock, 
and the actors are the assassins. 

The day is rapidly approaching when persons of rank 
and fashion will have their stalls at the Old Bailey, their 
private boxes at the Central Criminal Court. 

Ladies thronged Marylebone Police Office to see Hocker 
as their grandmothers crowded to the playhouse to see 
Garrick. It is customary to publish the names of fashion- 
able visitors to the theatre, and we much wish we could 
give the names of the ladies who mingled in the mob to 
gaze at Hocker. 

Some years ago grossly indecent farces were played at 
a certain theatre : in vain the Press reprobated the in- 
decency, it only attracted the more ; at last a newspaper 
gave notice that it would publish the names of the ladies 
who witnessed the performance, and the piece was very 
soon withdrawn. 

A saintly lady Mayoress took a large party to Newgate 
Chapel to gratify their curiosity with the sight of a mur- 
derer at his devotions the day before execution. The 
decorous Sunday's entertainment was noticed ; and the 
lady, who was not ashamed of the vulgar, morbid, un- 
feeling curiosity, was made ashamed of the public report 
of it, and there was an end of that indecency. 

As large prices are known to be given for a gaze at 
murderers in police-offices, prisons, and sessions' courts, 
we should like to know how much more the same parties 
would have given to witness the murder itself. 

What would have been the price of a first row on the 



480 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

wall of Belsize park, or for a peep through the casement 
of the cottage at Salt Hill ? 

The thing might easily be arranged by an advertise- 
ment to this effect : — 

TO the Lovers of Excitement and Amateurs of Murder. 
— An opportunity now offers for a private view on 
reasonable terms. The affair to come off, pay or play, 

on the night of the . For particulars of place and 

the programme, apply to Y Z, 1, Eosemary Lane. 

We suppose that persons who throng to gaze at assas- 
sins would have no repugnance to witness the crime 
itself, for by the vulgar eclat which they give to the 
criminals they in no slight degree contribute to the en- 
couragement and commission of other crimes of the same 
class. The followers and admirers of the bravado of one 
assassin make others. — (1845.) 

THE TRIUMPHS OF METAPHOR. 

We are glad to see the Americans making a free use of 
their eagle. Their eagle soars aloft, bathing her plumes 
in the clouds, disdaining the brute creation. A free indul- 
gence in this figurative triumph is to be encouraged as 
excellent for peace. Of all ways of asserting national superi- 
ority, it is the most inexpensive, and yet how satisfactory ! 
A writer or orator, burning with national enmity, delivers 
himself of a figure, giving a triumph to his country in the 
.person of its emblematic bird or beast, and straight he feels 
not only relieved of the load of perilous stuff, but delighted 
with himself for having Baid such fine things in honour of 
his dear native land. Wars should be conducted in this 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 481 

way, and in this way only. The American eagle should 
fight it out with the British lion ; the British lion, on its 
part, trampling on the moulting eagle; and the eagle 
soaring above the mangy Hon ; and each thanking Heaven 
for the victory, and singing Non nobis. 

We are sorry that the British lion has lately fallen into 
ridicule and disuse. The fault was with those who did 
not reserve him for national occasions, but dragged him 
into petty domestic quarrels, such as the great Mott ques- 
tion or the Andover Union. Every tailor quarrelling with 
his wife for dragging him from the public-house threatened 
her with the British Hon. This was the abuse of the lion ; 
but the lion is of excellent uses so long as he is kept in 
his sphere, to lash, roar, and rage against the birds and 
beasts of other nations. Napoleon was so conscious of 
the importance of the British lion that he had recourse to 
the denial of him, and insisted that the brute was a leopard. 
France would have been more pacific if she had had the 
good fortune to possess any able-bodied beast to take her 
part in figurative combat. Wanting this sort of represen- 
tation and metaphorical triumph, she was obliged to 
comfort her vanity by resort to vulgar arms. Her cock's 
crow scared the Hon, and that was something ; but she 
could not always be crowing by figurative deputy ; and 
the cock, being too near a representative with his strut, 
his swagger, and his coxcombries, seemed a satire upon 
her sons. Her lilies might serve a turn now and then in 
poetry or ballet ; but lilies cannot take the field, and are 
not of the martial complexion. 

It is for want of having some bird or beast to swagger 
handsomely for her in figure that France must occupy 

i i 



482 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Algeria, and exterminate uncountable thousands of Arabs. 
If she could set up some potent brute upon a metaphorical 
establishment, a griffin or dragon, or what not of that 
alarming sort, she might disband half her army, live at 
peace with her neighbours, and trample on all the world 
typically. If Europe and Africa understood their true 
interests, they would subscribe to furnish France with 
an endriago ; and we are far from certain that it would 
not be a politic generosity for England to make her a 
present of our lion, and to rest content with the unicorn, 
which is quite fresh, having been unused hitherto in meta- 
phor, however much used in stucco. With what a grace 
Her Majesty, on her next visit to the King of the French, 
might present him with the British lion to rouse himself 
and roar for France ! We could spare him ; and the lion 
would have fine scope for France in African warfare. 
—(1846.) 

MARKET PRICE OF VIRTUE. 

About this time of year we learn to a figure the price 
of virtue in the rewards assigned it. Virtue appears a 
shade lower this autumn than at the last annual quotation. 
At the Dunmow Agricultural Association, in Essex, the 
virtue of a labourer's widow, who had brought up the 
largest family with the least parochial relief, was rated at a 
scarlet cloak ; and the second in degree at a wash-tub and 
clothes-basket. Filial affection of the first water fetched 
16s., the measure of it being the support of parents for 
the longest period exceeding one year : the second prize 
for the same was 10s. . The parental duties were requited 
by a gammon of bacon. The rearing of a large family, 
without any or with the least parochial relief, was rewarded 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 483 

with a chest cf drawers : the second prize for the same was 
a pair of high shoes. Other virtues fetched some of them 
a smock-frock, some a pair of high shoes, some a waistcoat. 

To the imagination it is extremely delightful to see 
virtue so equipped. Once upon a time she was naked. 
The Eoman satirist mentions her as hawked about with 
bare feet ; now we behold her clothed in a smock-frock, 
with a scarlet cloak over it, and a waistcoat under it, and 
a stout pair of high shoes to her feet ; and for furniture, 
she has a chest of drawers, an American clock, a wash- 
tub, a clothes-basket, and for her little peculium 15s. in 
hard cash. For her provision she has a gammon of 
bacon. 

No one can say that virtue is not handsomely set up, 
compared, at least, with what her condition has been in 
other times. Eiches, says Bacon, are the baggage of 
virtue ; we see what her baggage is, and how rich it is. 

But, on the other hand, see what virtue does for all 
these bounties. She brings up the largest family without 
parochial relief. She takes care of a team of not less than 
four cart or plough horses a certain length of time on the 
same farm, and with the same employer ; she subscribes 
to the Dunmow Friendly Society ; she has had the care 
of a barn for not less than ten years, and the care of a 
large family for twice the time brought up without parish 
help, and the support of her parents into the bargain. 

There was a time when virtue was her own reward : 
but, now that her patrons have taken the matter in hand, 
few, very few, washerwomen are more handsomely pro- 
vided. At this rate, in another century virtue may come 
to keep a mangle. 

i i 2 



484 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Let no one mock the apparel and furniture of virtue. 
It is to be remembered how common she is — her name is 
Legion. The vices are the select few occupying the gaols. 
The virtues go about in smock frocks and high shoes. 
There is nothing so cheap as the virtues. For 155. you 
shall have the filial piety of a Grecian daughter ; and a 
Cornelia fetches only a gammon of bacon. But, low as 
the price of virtue is, it is had for the first time nowa- 
days. The market, however, is at present only agricul- 
tural, with the exception of Mr. Hudson, who has been 
specially rewarded for the care he has taken of himself all 
the days of his life, and for the indefatigable zeal with 
which he has feathered his nest. 

But the aristocratic and the royal virtues lack encour- 
agement. Should we see Louis Philippe match-making and 
fortune-hunting so shabbily as he is, if there had been a 
reward, some royal gammon, for the Prince who had 
brought up a large family without charge to his neigh- 
bours, supporting them solely out of a private fortune of 
hardly half a million sterling, together with a kingly 
revenue ? It would be excellent to inspire kings with 
some of that honest ambition which is cultivated at so 
small a cost in clowns. There should be rewards for the 
potentate who for the longest time had remained at peace ; 
rewards for taking care of his people ; rewards for not 
encroaching on his neighbours' territories ; rewards for 
not cutting throats ; rewards for the longest abstinence 
from foreign intrigues ; and rewards for not quartering 
out children on other .nations with subdolous designs, 
analogous to a reward to the labourer for not throwing 
Ins child on the parish with the design of his robbing the 
poor-house. — (1846.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 485 



THE PLAN FOR SANITARY IMPROVEMENT. 

Cleanliness is one of the latest discoveries. Washing 
may be said to have commenced in these realms in the 
present century. In Addison's ' Diary of a Citizen,' the 
worthy gentleman regularly records the washing of his 
hands and face once a day but, upon the occasion of a 
slight indisposition which entitled him to indulgence, the 
entry is ' Washed hands, but not face.' A celebrated 
doctor of the last century, when he was asked why he 
never used a nail brush, cried out with astonishment, ' A 
What? Never heard of such a thing in all my life.' The 
son of a dignitary of the Church, a Master of the 
Temple, was asked how it happened that his father's 
hands were always so dirty, and whether he ever chanced 
to wash them ? The reply was, ' Oh, yes ; he washes 
his hands, but he has a trick of putting them to his 
face.' 

The water-cure has done wonders for people who had 
never before made experiment of the uses of water. A 
large portion of the poor, however, still cling to the 
notion that dirt is warm and comfortable, as if anything 
detrimental to health, which is the warmest and most 
comfortable of all things, could conduce to those feelings. 

The upper classes are generally aware of the luxury 
of cleanliness in their persons and abodes, the interior at 
least ; but, nevertheless, how many a fine London mansion 
has before its door a grated aperture to steam it with 
the exhalations of the sewer. There are flowers in the 
balconies ; but a noisome stream of foul air is perpetually 
ascending, polluting and poisoning the atmosphere. We 
could name places, too, frequented by invalids, Clifton 



486 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

for instance, where, with the finest opportunities of 
drainage, most of the houses stand over a cess-pool ; and 
the inhabitants would be astonished and indignant if they 
were told they were nasty dirty people, for they have 
to learn that to live contentedly over reeking impurities, 
because they are out of sight though by no means out 
of smell, is not consistent with nicety. Drainage is to 
a house what ablution is to the person. — (1847.) 



FRENCH WINES AND ENGLISH COOKERY. 

We confess that we have our doubts whether any large 
increase in the consumption of French wines would follow 
a reduction of the duty. A taste for French wine is 
confined to the aristocratic classes who keep good tables. 
There is a concord between cookery and drinks. With 
a coarse, or even with a plain, English dinner a light 
Bordeaux has no zest. It does not harmonise with legs 
of mutton and beef-steaks. It assorts and becomes an 
auxiliary of digestion with light meals only ; and even 
with French cookery how seldom have the English the 
taste for the wine ; how generally they complain of its 
insipidity, its sourness, its coldness, and its unfitness for 
their stomachs, the greater part having their palates 
vitiated by strong stimulants! Amongst a hundred 
English residents in France of the middle class, hardly 
one will be found who really relishes the wine, and the 
greater number prefer detestably bad brandy. The most 
wholesome wines have the least chance of British popu- 
larity. The Burgundies are preferred to the Bordeaux, 
and the St. George or Tavail, which resembles bad port, 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 487 

are again better liked by John Bull than the Burgundies. 
But they cannot be drunk long without mischief. 

The general notion is that the light wines do not suit a 
cold climate : but we think the concord is more with 
the cookery than the climate, for the winter in France is 
much colder than in England ; and at a good table in the 
coldest season there is no disrelish for claret, and it is 
preferred by people who know what is conducive to 
health. But the cookery is the indispensable to the 
enjoyment and the fitness of the light wine. If there 
are any people who would drink Bordeaux at id. a 
bottle, or 8d. a bottle, with beef-steaks or shoulders of 
mutton, they are persons who now drink water under the 
same trials. The plain feeders who now drink beer and 
grog or fierce sherry or hot port with their meals, 
would not at any price change their potations for 
Bordeaux, which they delight to dishonour with all sorts 
of bad names. 

A change in the taste for drinks can only be brought 
about by a change in the style of cookery. So long as 
people eat lumps of meat slackly roasted or furiously 
boiled with underdone vegetables a I'eau, they will prefer 
the more substantial and ardent drinks. Between the 
kitchen and "the cellar there is the closest connection. 
The cooks, called plain because they are no cooks at all, 
drive people to gin. If cookery should ever arise in this 
country, the reduction of the duties on French wines 
would have very different results from those to be 
expected now ; and Bordeaux, if it knew its interest, 
would despatch culinary missionaries to this country to 
prepare the way for its wines. 



488 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

The misfortune of English cookery is the excellence of 
the materials. Goldsmith made one of his very few 
mistakes when he said that the French would be good 
cooks if they had any butchers' meat. They are good 
cooks because they have to dress what John Bull would 
turn up his nose at as carrion. Lean, stringy cattle 
and fast days have made cookery in France : what is 
ever to make it in England we cannot pretend to foresee. 
In the scarcity Ireland has been taught to make soup. 
The oddest thing is that the culinary art is supposed to 
exist commonly, though the number of cooks proper is 
probably not larger than that of the painters, or certainly 
not than that of the musicians ; yet you hear people talk 
familiarly of their cooks just as if they had such artists 
in their kitchens. There. was once as prevailing a belief 
in witches, and without the daily disproof. The old 
maxim was that the hood did not make the monk ; but 
there is no question that the wages, and the wages only, 
make the cook. — (1847.) 

LORD ELLESMERE'S LETTER. 1 

We are pleased to see that Lord Ellesmere is not quite 
easy about his letter. It is unfortunate that what he 
meant to say has so little corresponded with what he has 
expressed to such effect as to have made every English- 
man in France feel the humiliation of his evidence 
against the spirit of his country. We are now told that 
the passage about the Guards marching out of one end of 
London in the event of the entry of the French at another, 

1 With reference to Sir John Burp:oyne's famous letter to the Duke of 
Wellington on the defenceless state of the country. — (Ed.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 489 

implied no more than that retreat might be advisable, 
retreat being no disgrace in war ; but how was it that 
Lord Ellesmere, whose imagination is so lively, could not 
conceive any circumstances in which the London garrison 
could hold an enemy even for a few hours in check ? 
Why did he suppose that it could have nothing better to 
do in any case than to fly before the enemy ? The neces- 
sity might or might not exist. Why assume only the 
humiliating contingency ? 

The fact is, that Lord Ellesmere's letter is a specimen 
of a sort of fanfaronade, not very common, but not quite 
unknown : the fanfaronade of fear. As the braggart deals 
in exaggerations of one kind, so he deals in those of ano- 
ther. Each plays his part for the effect : to produce a 
sensation, the one for self-glorification, the other to favour 
particular views. The public, however, should always 
distrust a man who sets to work with an attempt to 
frighten it out of its wits, for his calculation is surely to 
take advantage of the loss of its wits to impose some 
crotchet upon it. As for Lord Ellesmere, we are quite 
certain that, if the Prince de Joinville had written the 
letter which bears his lordship's name, he would have 
been at least as ready to come forward in vindication of 
the spirit and energies of his country as he had been to 
depreciate them. As the homely saying phrases it, he 
has been pleased to cry stinking fish most lustily : but he 
would assuredly not suffer a rival to make the same un- 
savoury proclamation. — (1848.) 



490 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE CAPE GOVERNOR AND THE KAFIR FOOL. 

We have seen little books professing to make easy 
various instructions, but for the first time we see a Go- 
vernor setting about making governing easy, and reducing 
it to the level of the meanest capacity. Sir Harry Smith is, 
as it were, giving lessons in one syllable to Kafirs. Whether 
he makes himself understood by his pupils we cannot pre- 
tend to conjecture, but certain it is that he utterly passes 
our comprehension. At a meeting of his children, as be 
styles them, his Excellency proclaims that the Queen has 
sent him a paper, and he holds up a scroll and throws it 
down on the ground, and cries, ' There lies the law of the 
land — never to be altered — no change.' This seems 
rather odd treatment of the paper sent by the Queen, and 
not less a liberty with truth is the assertion of the unalter- 
able or unchangeable. The Governor then takes hold of 
a certain staff of office, and says, ' Here is the stick which 
will carry it out.' 

The stick we conceive to be a symbol, not unapt, of the 
sort of officer by whom Her Majesty's affairs are managed, 
and the immutable laws carried out in the sense in which 
the dead are carried out. 

The Governor soon after begins singing his own praises, 
vaunting what great things he had done, and how he had 
made minced meat of rebellious Boers. ' You all know 
how I fight,' says he, after he had taken good care to tell 
them ; and then he proceeds, ' you know how far the 
Orange river is. I was over there the other day, and you 
see I am here now, and I am ready to fight there to- 
morrow (pointing in the direction of Kye) if necessary.' 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 491 

Apropos to fighting, his Excellency introduces the Bishop 
from Cape Town as the man who teaches his Excellency 
the way to salvation, and who comes to teach Kafirs the 
way to be Christians. It is to be hoped the Kafirs will 
not ask the holy man whether, in his lessons of salvation, 
he taught the Governor the alacrity he professes in fighting, 
or in what part of the Christian religion the sword exercise 
is inculcated. 

The Governor now cries out for gifts for the Bishop. 
1 Can none give a calf, or a little corn? ' but, evidently 
soon in despair of a response to this touching appeal, he 
turns to one Jan Tzatzoe, addressing him thus handsomely, 
' Have you nothing to say ? You who have been in 
England, seen the great world there, and you saw that no 
one eats the bread of idleness there ' [fie on it, Governor! 
did the Bishop teach you no better than this ? ] ' and yet, 
fool, you dared to join with the Kafirs against the power 
of the Queen. Have you anything to say to the Lord 
Bishop for the furtherance of education among your 
countrymen ? ' Now mark the reply of Jan Tzatzoe, and 
note that, as the Governor spoke like a boor and a clown, 
the Kafir answered like a man of sense and of breeding, 
and, in effect, delivered a most polished rebuke to the 
man dressed in his little brief authority, and playing his 
antics before high Heaven. 

Jan Tzatzoe : ' The Lord Bishop is a great and wise 
man, and the Great Chief has already remarked that I am 
a fool. How, therefore, can I give any advice upon this 
subject ? But we certainly require teaching to remove 
our ignorance. The Lord Bishop will best know how to 
accomplish this.' 



492 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Let him begin with the Governor, by all means, for 
the fool Tzatzoe has not a hundredth part the need of the 
lessons. 

Obviously Sir Harry Smith makes a mistake in suppos- 
ing it necessary to let his mind down to the level of these 
semi-savages, for their speeches to him have the sense, 
point, and dignity of which his to them, stuffed as they 
are with childish nonsense and rude bluster, are void. — 
(1848.) 

RECIPROCITY AND RETALIATION. 

* 

There were times when potentates punished themselves 
while awaiting the attainment of certain objects. One 
king would not shave till a particular wish was gratified ; 
another would not cut his nails ; a Queen of Spain would not 
change the garment nearest her skin till a besieged fortress 
should be taken, whence the colour of dirty linen (the 
Isabelle) came into fashion. These were the follies of 
princes ; and analogous would be the follies of nations in 
mortifying themselves and submitting to privations while 
awaiting their neighbours' conversion to wiser commer- 
cial views. Is the proverb that one fool makes many 
to be the principle of the world's commercial conduct ? 
As they put an ass at the head of a caravan in the East to 
regulate the rate of march, so is the most backward nation 
to give the step, and regulate the order of the march of 
commerce ? Is it for ever to be the ass in front ? Is no 
sally ever to be made to show that the ass's pace may be 
advantageously outstripped ? Are backwardness and 
stupidity, conjoined with obtuseness and obstinacy, to 
impose their laws and injurious obstructions on intelli- 
gence and enterprise ? Are we to be fixed fast in the 
slough of folly, waiting for others to get wiser? Must 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 493 

the flinging away of our cap and bells depend on our 
neighbour's discarding his insignia of duncishness also ? 
—(1849.) 

INJURED JOKES. 

There is nothing more revolting than the maltreatmen t 
of a good story. It makes one's heart bleed, or one's 
blood to boil, according to temperament, to see a mangled 
jest. What is a man not capable of who will knock out 
the brains of a joke, or hammer a fine point as flat as a 
pancake ? There are too many of these wretches ; but 
little did we expect to see Lord Brougham figuring 
amongst the execrable number. See what he has done ! 

' When he saw surreptitious practices like these im- 
puted — but he hoped falsely imputed — to the Minister of 
Finance at Eome, he could not help reminding their 
lordships of a droll anecdote connected with the name of 
Voltaire. Voltaire, D'Alembert, and some others were 
sitting round the fire one December evening at the house of 
Madame de Chatelet, amusing themselves by telling stories 
of celebrated robbers, and one told one story beginning 
thus, — " Once upon a time there lived a great robber at 
Nantes," and so on ; and then another proceeded, — 
" Once upon a time there lived another great robber at 
Lyons," and so on. At last the story came round to 
Voltaire, and he began, — " Once upon a time there lived 
a general controller of finance," and then he stopped, 
and, resuming, after a pause, said, — " Pardon me, gentle- 
men, I have forgotten the rest" ' 

Out upon it ! ' forgotten the rest.' What point is there 
in forgetting the rest ? Voltaire must shudder in his grave 
at such a wrong to his fine satire. 

' Gentlemen,' said Voltaire : ' Once upon a time there 



494 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

was a Farmer-General of Taxes.' And with that he 
stopped. c Go on, go on,' cried the company. ' I have 
nothing more to say,' replied Voltaire, implying that 
the story of robbery was fully told. He might have 
added, ' you know the rest,' but ' I forget the rest' is 
sheer platitude or niaiserie. We want a law for the pre- 
vention of cruelty to jokes. It is harrowing to the feel- 
ings to see the horrible mutilation of them. We are 
prepared to maintain that a license should be taken out 
for narrating jests and good stories, and that no one 
should obtain a certificate till he had given good proof of 
his competency to be trusted with a joke. Under a good 
jest law, Lord Brougham would be fined £50, or, in 
default, two months' imprisonment in the House of Cor- 
rection, with hard labour at Joe Miller, for the maltreat- 
ment of that excellent story of Voltaire. An association 
for the protection of jokes would be a most humane 
institution ; and protection laws, too, are needed, as the 
British joke cannot possibly compete with the untaxed 
jokes of the Continent ; so much so that, as may be seen 
in the Houses of Parliament, our British jokes are fast 
becoming no jokes at all. 

Doubtless it was with a patriotic feeling that Lord 
Brougham knocked the brains out of that joke of Voltaire, 
so as to reduce it below the level of a joke of British 
manufacture. — ( 1849.) 



M. PACIFICO'S CLAIMS. 



The nothing left the unhappy Pacifico by the injustice 
of Portugal was lost to him by the rapine of the Greek 
mob, and the nothing was worth £5,000. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 495 

The case is something like that described by the Irish 

counsellor P in an address to a jury, ' My unfortunate 

client lost all he had in the world, gentlemen of the jury 
— all he had in the world ! and also his hat, gentlemen.' 
So M. Paciflco lost all he had in the world by Portuguese 
improbity, and also his house at Athens by Greek rapine. 
—(1850.) 

SAVE US FROM OUR FRIENDS. 

Baikes upbraided Brummell with not having taken his 
part when he heard him run down. Brummell stoutly 
maintained that he had taken Eaikes's part. ' What did 
you say in my defence, then ? ' asked Eaikes. ' Why,' 
answered Brummell, ' they said you were not fit to carry 
offal to Old Nick, which I knew to be very unjust.' 
' Well, and what did you reply ? ' ' Why, I answered 
for you that what they asserted was the reverse of the 
truth, and that you were thoroughly fit to carry offal to 
Old Nick. What more could I say ? ' 

And so Sir Eobert Inglis, in answer to Mr. Williams' 
complaint that he had represented him as incapable of 
uttering twenty sentences, replied that, on the contrary, 
he had ascribed to him the power of stringing together 
twenty sentences, and these, moreover, full of the most 
vulgar feelings and prejudices. — (1851.) 

THE COCK-PHEASANT AND THE DUELLISTS. 1 

Men now-a-days know pretty well what to think of 
duelling : but we want to know what the cock-pheasant 

1 The incident referred to was thus reported in the papers at the time : 
' The principals were then conducted to their positions, and Mr. Fortescue 
was on the point of putting the ominous question, " Are you ready, gentle- 



496 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

thought of the duel between Colonel Boniilly and the 
Honourable Mr. Smythe, when their appearance on the 
ground disturbed his peace and put him on the wing. 
Here was a cock-pheasant who had passed his life in 
taking care of his life, and especially eschewing powder . 
and shot. What must be his opinion of two gentlemen 
who come together for the express purpose of exposing 
themselves to the danger which this cock-pheasant had 
made it his anxious business to avoid ? What must the 
cock-pheasant have thought of two Christians who illus- 
trated the golden rule ' to do as they would be done by,' 
by shooting and standing to be shot ? The law of sport 
spares the cock-pheasant sitting ; but the law of honour 
has no such scruples for the duellist ; and it must have 
puzzled the cock-pheasant, with his experience, to see 
men respecting each other's lives less than his. The cock- 
pheasant did not wait to witness the duel, because, besides 
his mortal dislike to the smell of powder, he had a shrewd 
notion that the combatants were likely to hit anything 
rather than each other, and that a cock-pheasant's person 
was by no means safe within reach of their weapons. The 
cock-pheasant, with his rooted prejudice against shot, 
could probably never understand how the exchange of 
two bullets discharged in opposite directions could give 
complete satisfaction to a very angry gentleman, and 
repair affronted honour. The cock-pheasant has no idea 
of the virtue of lead, and that its idle passage through the 

men ? " when a cock-pheasant, which had been a quiet observer of the scene 
so far, suddenly rose within a few yards of the combatants, and with a loud 
cry dashed into the adjoining wood. This untoward circumstance occurring 
at such a moment caused no little excitement among- the party, who at first 
feared that they had been surprised.' — (Ed.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 497 

air to the risk of life may take out the sting of a word 
that would, but for this remedy, be intolerable. The cock- 
pheasant must think it hard that men are not satisfied with 
the same proceeding towards birds of his feather, but will 
aim and press things to the conclusion of the spit and 
bread sauce, hunger being so much more difficult to 
appease than honour. The cock-pheasant has, however, 
to observe that the issue is, after all, the same, for the 
duellists are roasted by the Press and the public, and, 
what makes the matter worse, roasted alive. — (1851.) 

A PASSAGE FROM THE HISTORY OP THE RABBITS. 

Many years ago the rabbits did not burrow as at present, 
but lived al fresco like the hares. This made them so 
easy a prey to the foxes that half the nation were con- 
stantly occupied in thinking of some remedy for such a 
state of things. 

At last, an intelligent rabbit proposed that they should 
hide in small holes under the ground, where the foxes 
could not find them out. This suggestion, however, was 
no sooner made than it was scouted with the greatest in- 
dignation, first and most particularly by the foxes, who, 
being a sort of upper assembly, set the fashion, abusing 
the unfortunate rabbit for what they called his ' most 
unrabbitish' proposal, and declaring that the rabbits had 
always lived in an open, above-ground manner, scorning 
to hide their actions from the light of day like wretched 
rats and mere vermin. Among themselves, however, and 
when no rabbits were within earshot, some of the foxes 
used to add sometimes, c Besides, how are foxes to live ? ' 

Thus all the foxites joined in denouncing the unrabbitish 

K K 



498 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

miscreant, and in time, by the force of the cry, they 
carried nearly all the rest of the rabbits with them. 
Many indignant rabbits went even so far as to prophesy 
that, if one single rabbit hid himself in a hole, the sun of 
the rabbits would set for ever ; and one prayed, with tears, 
that before any such base, unrabbitish measure should 
come to pass, * he might fill a rabbit's grave.' 

Now, if a bewildered young rabbit, hearing all this, 
happened to ask, ' if it was not unrabbitish, then, to sit 
still and be eaten up ? ' c Not a bit of it,' would the 
foxites reply, ' that is just the most rabbitish thing you 
could do.' If he still objected that in their own earths the 
foxes hid in holes themselves, the foxites would exclaim 
angrily, 'Vv^at on earth, or rather under it, has that to 
do with the question ? The foxes hide because they like 
to be private, and not to have their societies intruded 
upon ? Good gracious ! I suppose you will say next that 
the foxes ought to be intruded upon ? It would be most 
unrabbitish to say that foxes might be intruded upon.' 
And then all the by-squatters stamped and pattered with 
their hind feet, and cried out, ' He's no rabbit ! ' 'He 
must be a Welsh one ! ' and so on, till the poor little 
rabbit dropped his tail and slunk off thoroughly ashamed 
of himself, and afraid that there really was something un- 
rabbitish about him. 

Everybody knows that the rabbits long since changed 
their opinions on the hole question, and now hide in 
comparative security in their burrows ; while the upper 
assembly and their friends, though they prey less on 
rabbits than before, still c live,' and prosper into the bargain : 
but how the great reform came about, we have nothing 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 499 

but a few dim rabbitical traditions to inform us. The same 
great Cumberland rabbit, however, who had so large a 
paw in putting down the obnoxious duty on the importa- 
tion of turnip-tops, appears (although once much opposed 
to the change as unrabbitish) to have been a principal 
ingredient in this rabbit-pie also. — (1851.) 

PEACEMONGERING INCONSISTENCIES. 

A militiaman is committed to take his trial for a burglary ; 
upon which the professed peacemaker, Mr. E. Fry, fires 
off a note to the ' Times,' asking, ' Is it not hard upon the 
Peace party that they should be made the objects of a 
Government prosecution for protesting against a measure 
the only practical incidents of which that have yet been 
announced are burglary, and a most brutal assault upon 
a female ? ' 

'Now we are no advocates of the militia, the organisation 
of which we have opposed as clumsy and unsuited to the 
sort of defence of which the country may have need against 
a sudden inroad ; but we are friends of fair play and just 
reasoning, neither of which can we find in the attempt to 
fasten on a body of 50,000 men the odium of the unproved 
offence charged against one. Did it not occur to this 
' blessed peacemaker' that the man committed for burglary 
has not been tried for the crime, and is as yet entitled to 
the presumption of innocence ? And is there not a text of 
as high authority as 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' 'Judge 
not, lest ye be judged ' ? 

Some months ago, in treating of the extravagances of the 
peacemongers, we asked whether the doctrine of non-resist- 
ance was to be extended to robbery ; and Mr. E. Fry, at 

X K 2 



500 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

a public meeting, answered in the affirmative, and cited an 
example which he must excuse us for regarding as fabulous. 
Afterwards appeared the tract of another of the peace- 
mongering brethren, proposing, in the event of invasion 
by a French army, to lay our liberties and properties at 
their feet, and upon bringing them to shame by such con- 
duct, causing them penitently to quit our shores, and to 
offer restitution of what they had robbed us of, returning 
the fifty millions or so with the grace of what our neigh- 
bours call a pour-boire. 

Now assuming, as we may fairly do, that Mr. Fry 
concurs in this view, we cannot see why he should regard 
the militiaman's charged offence with so much displeasure. 
Why would he deny to a militiaman in a red jacket what 
he would permit to a Frenchman, ay, and to 50,000 
Frenchmen, in blue ? Why such benignant resignation to 
the rapine of a French army, and so much ado about one 
act of robbery by one of the force which should defend us 
against the former evil on a tremendously wholesale scale ? 
Verily, this is something more than straining out a gnat 
and swallowing a camel. 

Mr. Fry has contended that robbers ought to have their 
way, that it is unwise and unjustifiable to resist them ; and 
consistently he ought to deplore that the burglarious militia- 
man had the strong hand put upon him. Is he so un- 
patriotic as to think better of Frenchmen than of his own 
countrymen? If not, supposing all the 50,000 militia to 
be burglars to a man, he should be as ready to deliver up 
the country and all its wealth to them as to an army of 
Frenchmen, in the full faith that when gorged with plunder, 
unresistingly seized, they would become mightily ashamed 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS, 501 

of themselves, sneak back to their homes, and make resti- 
tution of all their pillage. If English soldiers be no worse 
than French soldiers, both with full license of rapine, the 
peacemaking manifesto has marked out the forestated 
conclusion. 

In contemplating the incidents of invasion, and the 
politic submission to the same, Mr. Fry's brother- disciple 
has omitted to consider a large class of cases which are 
always to be found in the line of march of a French army : 
and Mr. Fry himself, in his doctrine of non-resistance to 
crimes of violence, has also overlooked the same outrages. 
Is non-resistance the duty of women subjected to assaults 
of a certain nature ? Or, in the event of the occupation 
of our country by a French army, should female honour 
be surrendered up as meekly and readily as the wealth 
and liberties of our land ? This is not a case allowing of 
the offer of restitution expected by peacemakers in the 
other instances ; but if it were, of course, upon the same 
principle, they would refuse it. The peacemaking Yirginius 
would hand his daughter to Appius. Tarquin would not 
have been a ravisher if Lucretia, with the lights of a 
Peace Association, had discovered the unique virtue of 
submission. — (1852.) 



Everyone knows the old story of the Quaker on board 
a ship preparing for action, who, having most earnestly 
protested against the sin of shedding an enemy's blood, 
added that, if nevertheless the captain was resolved to 
burden his soul with such guilt, the right way to effect 
his purpose, with the completest success, was to perform a 
certain manoeuvre, which the man of peace described 



502 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

with admirable exactness, Mr. Cobden reminds us of 
this Quaker professing to understand so critically the art 
of war, which he so profoundly abhorred. He has not 
changed his opinion that the war is unnecessary and 
unjust, and therefore iniquitous ; but he finds this further 
fault in the crime, that it is not committed in a workman- 
like and effective manner. ' Thou best of cut-throats,' 
was the praise of Macbeth. c Thou awkwardest of cut- 
throats,' is the reproach of Mr. Cobden. — (185-i.) 

TABLE-TUItXING AND TABLE-TALKING. 

We have suggested an Inquisition for tables ; but, before 
handing them over to such a tribunal, it would be well 
to ascertain, beyond all doubt, the fact of their posses- 
sion, or liability to possession, according to the conve- 
nience of their configuration. The Eev. E. Gillson indeed 
tells us : 

' We see a table manifesting all the appearance of a most 
animated creature ; obeying every command ; answering 
questions with such intelligence and ingenuity, as to 
render any conversation perfectly easy.' 

' These are simple facts, they cannot be denied,' adds 
the rev. gentleman. ' I am a liar if it is not true,' says 
Major Longbow. 

But we are not satisfied with the questions asked of 
tables, and too much stress is laid on mere circumstances 
of demeanour, such as that a table replied to an inquiry 
with such emphasis as nearly to overturn itself! Em- 
phasis and discretion should be combined, as in the words 
of the old School Speaker, and we are not to be duped by 
the mere animal spirits of our table. We want to know 



8 OCTAL AXJ) MISCELLANEOUS. 50 3 

what there is in him, in his innermost drawer, as it were. 
It is not enough that the table can dance before us like 
Taglioni, and pirouette like Eosati ; that it can make the 
legs which the carpenter has made for it caper about. 
What it knows is our inquiry ; and for this purpose let it 
be asked questions which the examiner himself cannot 
answer at the time, the answers to which future time will 
verify or falsify. To ask an animated intelligent table 
how many lies there are in the Czar's manifesto is simply 
childish, because everyone knows who can count twenty ; 
but a question, for example, of the present state of the 
belligerents in the Principalities would bring the informa- 
tion of the spirit to a decisive test, the news a fortnight 
hence confirming it, or proving it an impostor. Another 
home question would be the plan of the new Eeform Bill, 
or the corning politics of Mr. Disraeli. 

Mr. Gillson, however, contends that none but the im- 
pious will doubt the evidence of talking tables, which he 
connects with a beast in Eevelations, and indignantly ob- 
serves : ' If it were the testimony of men, it would obtain 
a hearing, but because it is the testimony of God it is 
disregarded, thereby giving a striking proof that the Devil 
reigns.' 

This . testimony of tables is the testimony not indeed 
of man, but of a thing made by man, the work of his 
hands. It is the testimony of a piece of carpentry. 
Isaiah cuts idolatry to the quick, in the description of the 
mechanical part. ' He cutteth a log, and with one-half he 
make th an idol, and falleth down and worshippeth it, 
and with the other he maketh a fire, and crieth, " Ha ! 
Ha ! I am warm." ' 



504 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

And so the carpenter takes a plank, and cuts it in two, 
and with one-half he makes a table, capable of the most 
wonderful intelligence and animation ; and with the other 
he makes a kitchen dresser, which cannot speak a word, 
which knows nothing, and is as inanimate as any other log. 
The cook cannot ask it what the orders for dinner will be ; 
nor consult it in any of the abstruse mysteries of her art ; 
nor learn from it whether the policeman will make her 
an offer of marriage, or whether kitchen stuff will rise in 
the market with other articles. But as there were people 
who once believed that they could split a log, and allot 
one-half to the fabrication of a god, the other to the uses 
of a fao'orot, so there are those now who believe that the 
carpenter or cabinet-maker can put together a plank and 
four legs, so as to shape an organisation for a spirit. And 
they are not all in Lunatic Asylums ; but some of them in 
Pulpits in the year 1853. And we prate of enlightenment 
and progress, Heaven help us ! and scoff at Catholic 
miracles and winking Madonnas ! — (1853.) 

PMMOGENITUKE. 

The discussion the other day on Mr. Locke King's bill, 
regulating the succession to real property in the case of 
persons dying intestate, ought not to pass without a word 
or two of comment. We cannot say that the bill was lost 
after due debate upon its merits. It was dropped in a 
fright. It was precipitately got out of the way, in alarm 
at what Lord John Eussell called ' the principle which it 
appeared to involve, supposing it to be carried any 
further.' 

Now, we confess ourselves quite unable to see in Mr. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



Locke King's suggestion anything to justify this. The 
proposed change was a simple one, quite complete in 
itself, and not claiming to be carried any further. We 
look in vain for anything about it of a revolutionary 
character : we can find this only in the speeches and 
articles levelled against it. The whole matter is of the 
simplest. As Mr. Monckton Milnes quite properly ob- 
served, though he was mightily taken to task for saying 
it, the law of primogeniture in this country is in the main 
not a law but a custom. It is in the power of every 
Englishman to bequeath his property to whom he pleases. 
In the making of his will he is subject only to such re- 
strictions as have been imposed upon his land by his own 
forefathers, in the shape of entails, settlements, mortgages, 
and other private bonds. If our noblemen and gentle- 
men of England chose to begin, to-morrow, the practice 
of dividing their lands equally among their children, there 
is no law by which they could be hindered from so doing. 
What is it, then, that restrains them ? They are restrained 
by custom and opinion ; by the wish so prevalent and 
natural that estates shall be held together through a series 
of generations, and that old families shall retain their 
standing on the soil. ISTo sensible man can desire that 
restraint should be put upon this freedom of action, or 
that legislation should confine it within any strait-jacket 
of a theory. The complaint is that, when a man dies 
intestate, legislation does step in with its strait-jacket, and 
that the theory of primogeniture is applied precisely where 
it is not wanted. 

Seldom indeed does a great landowner die intestate. 
Will anyone collect the instances ? Where large interests 



506 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

are at stake, they are carefully watched over. There 
is no great property through the length and breadth of 
England which has not its entails and settlements, whicli 
is not subject to its entire code of family law. What 
Mr. Locke King proposed is simply that, when a man 
dies without leaving any directions for the disposition of 
his real property, the law, bound to no theory, shall cause 
its distribution in a fair and natural way among all his chil- 
dren. This is the state of things which already exists in 
Kent under the name of Gavelkind tenure, and it there 
causes no inconvenience whatever. We never heard of 
any cuttings up of large estates, or of any revolutionising 
of the habits or lands of Kentish proprietors, occasioned 
by it. Every man may appoint his own heirs, of course ; 
and the great owners take care to do so. But the man 
who neglects to make his will is just the man among 
whose children a law of primogeniture, in cases of intestacy, 
can work only mischief. It is not as a stake in the coun- 
try, but as the means of self-support, that farmers, and 
people of small property, care for their possessions. 
Younger sons of the wealthy have friends or connections 
able to push them forward in the world. Division of the 
land is seldom a question of bread to them. Not so to 
the younger children of a farmer, or small owner, who 
by the accident of their father's intestacy may see, con- 
trary to whatever was known of his habits or intentions, 
all his land given by law to the eldest son, and themselves 
brought at once to beggary. 

We are therefore quite, unable to detect any tiling revo- 
lutionary in Mr. Locke King's proposal. We cannot 
even see that it raises a question on the English custom 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 507 

of primogeniture, or on the partition of estates, or on 
French proprietorships, or on anything else of that kind. 
All these topics, and more, were quite needlessly raised 
in the discussion. The true question was, whether it 
would not be well to abstain from direct legal interference 
in all matters of the kind ; leaving the question of division 
of land, or descent by primogeniture, as it now stands, 
wholly in the hands of the people ; continuing to every 
man the title to bequeath as he pleases property that is 
his own ; but allowing the property of a father, when no 
other disposition has been made, to be applied in a natural 
way for the support of all his children. 

We cannot see how this principle, which is the sound 
one — the principle, namely, of non-interference — can be 
carried any farther. That was the alarm taken in this 
debate, and surely it is a groundless one. Any attempt 
to destroy the customs of inheritance usual in this country, 
could proceed only on a principle of interference directly 
opposed to Mr. Locke King's proposition. — (1854.) 

FEEDING ON KEPUTATIONS. 

A man who feeds on reputations, of course, likes to feed 
on the best, and, having found and pronounced it good, 
he proceeds to cut it up. When you eat your mutton it 
is with no ill-opinion of the sheep, nor with any ill-will 
to it. What said the cannibal on his trial for murder, 
when asked by an interpreter, in the idiom of his tongue, 
whether he would like to be tried by the wig man on the 
bench ? — ' Me like to be tried by him ? Me like him too 
well : if Me catch him Me eat him ; ' a declaration of love 
which did not tend to an acquittal. 



508 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

And thus Mr. Disraeli likes Lord John Eussell's charac- 
ter so well that, if he can catch the opportunity, he will 
prey upon it. — (1854.) 

DE. WHEWELL OX ENGLISH. 

In a lecture on education, Dr. Whewell observes that 
the main structure of our language is Saxon, but that all 
that gives it a living character is derived from the Latin ; 
in exemplification of which most questionable assertion he 
cites the word ^>r^paid, now in common and barbarous 
use. Now the adjunct to the word does not in this in- 
stance give the peculiar significance as Dr. Whewell 
affirms, for the sense is complete with the simple word 
paid, to which the pre adds nothing but a superfluous 
syllable. As well might it be said that a thing was pre- 
clone as prepaid. The fact is completely expressed with- 
out the help of any addition. The barbarous surplusage, 
and as barbarous mongrel compound, of ' prepaid ' was 
introduced with the penny postage, and is in usage con- 
fined to it alone. If you send a parcel by rail or coach, 
paying the carriage, you simply write paid upon it. 
When you buy an article for ready money, you pay 
beforehand, but do not talk of prepaying. When you 
pay the toll of a bridge or turnpike before passing through, 
prepaying is not the word for simply paying for the right 
of way. 

So much for the cited example of the part which Latin 
performs in our language. As for the general jDroposi- 
tion, in support of which the unlucky prepaid is adduced, 
it seems to us to argue a very imperfect knowledge of our 
language, or a very vitiated taste. 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 509 

Iii the English Bible there are no Latinisms ; and where 
is the life of our language to be found in such perfection as 
in the translation of the Bible ? We will venture to affirm 
that no one is master of the English language who is not 

O Do 

well read in the Bible, and sensible of its peculiar excel- 
lences. It is the pure well of English. The taste which 
the Bible forms is not a taste for big words, but a taste 
for the simplest expression or the clearest medium for 
presenting ideas. Eemarkable it is that most of the 
sublimities in the Bible are conveyed in monosyllables. 
For example, ' Let there be light, and there was light.' 
Do these words want any life that Latin could lend them ? 
j^ay, let Dr. Whewell try the experiment of introducing 
a Latinism, and certain we are that the effect will 
not be improvement, except to his own peculiar taste. 
Would he deem this reading an emendation of Moses : 
Let there be light, and there was solar illumination ? 
The best styles are the freest from Latinisms ; and it may 
be almost laid down as a rule that a good writer will 
never have recourse to a Latinism while a Saxon word 
will equally serve his purpose. We cannot dispense with 
words of Latin derivation : but there should be the plea 
of necessity for resorting to them, or we wrong our 
English. Swift and Defoe are most remarkable for the 
purity of their English, and their sparing use of Latin 
derivatives. Johnson wrote latine, but he spoke English. 
His conversation was always the conversation of a wit — 
his writing too often the writing of a pedant. His sayings 
live amongst us as freshly as in the moment of their 
delivery; but his 'Bambler' and 'Basselas' slumber on 
the bookselves. Not so his 4 Lives of the Poets,' which 



510 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

are more natural, that is to say, more English in 
style.— (1854.) 

THE SOURCES OF WAR. 

A war is generally like a great river, whose sources are 
lost to view and hardly traceable. The Cape war had 
its origin in a stolen hatchet. The cutting down of a flag- 
staff in New Zealand cost us some considerable amount 
of treasure, besides no little bloodshed. The Eussian 
war ostensibly commenced about a church key; and as 
respectable as all these would be an American war about 
the Falkland hogs. To try the conclusion, which of the 
two nations had the wrong sow by the ear, would not 
cost more than some two or three hundred millions of 
money, and perhaps as many thousands of lives. — (1854.) 

THE FATE OF THE DOGS. 

For want of the knowledge of common things the enemies 
of dog-carts have had their will, passed their bill, and the 
dogs have gone to the dogs, thirty thousand martyrs to 
humanity upon the lowest calculation. By this measure 
the little property of as many poor men is swept away, 
not confiscated indeed, for what is taken from them is 
not carried to public account, but virtually destroyed. 
It is but a small matter, some sleek comfortable person 
will say ; but nothing is small to the poor. Nil habitit 
Codrus et tamen Mud perdidit infelix totum nihil. How 
cruel a thing is ignorance. These legislators have not 
known What they have been doing, in taking from the poor 
man his fellow-labourer : and bread-winner, and so it is 
pleaded in extenuation of the child, that it knows not 
what harm it is doing when it pokes the cat's eyes out or 
spins a cock-chafer. — (1854.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 511 



FOPPERIES AXD ESSENTIALS. 

If our Generals do not give the enemy a dressing, they 
make up for it by giving their troops a dressing, in both 
the literal and figurative sense of the word. Indeed, our 
Generals seem to be so full of grief about dress as to have 
no thought or care of anything else. Lord Eaglan must 
be in a dreadful state of mind. He finds that such a 
want of care is shown in wearing the uniform in a becom- 
ing manner, that it is difficult to recognise the officers as 
officers at all. The shell jacket is allowed to fly open, 
that is, the shell bursts, showing underneath a red flannel 
shirt, with nothing round the neck, not even a white 
shirt collar. Often a turban is worn over the forage-cap, 
the chin is unshaven, and ' there is such an absence of 
what is befitting the appearance of an officer in the whole 
person, that no one can be otherwise than struck with the 
general disregard of what is proper/ 

This anti-climax is highly expressive. The sentence 
breaks drown under the weight of the distress. ' The 
disregard of what is proper ' comes out like a hysterical 
sob. 

The Commander of the Forces, having thus poured out 
his griefs, states what he wants for the correction of the 
evil. He does not insist on their buttoning their jackets 
from the bottom to the top; but he does hope the uniform 
will be worn with care and attention, no matter in what 
country or on what service. 

How many buttons will content him he does not specify. 
He does not insist on all, but implies that some buttoning 
there must be, no matter what the thermometer may say. 
We now know the meaning of ' not caring a button ' ; 



512 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

it describes the dissolute habit of Lord Eaglan's officers 
in the particular of dress. So Cobbett wound up an 
invective against Quakers with the words, ' the button- 
less blackguards ! ' It is by buttons that we are held to 
the decorums. The man who does not button breaks 
with the ties of all the proprieties, and defies appear- 
ances. 

Another General is full of trouble about the stock, and 
orders if it be not worn the neck shall be bare, that 
is, no handkerchief is to be allowed as substitute ; whence 
it follows that there is to be no choice between a choking 
and a sore throat. Would there be any mighty harm in 
a black handkerchief round the throat ? As they say in 
the House of Commons, we pause for a reply. But an- 
other horror has come to pass. The soldiers turn down 
their stiff collars, and, like their officers, wear their jackets 
wholly or partly open, a practice denounced as slovenly 
and peremptorily forbidden. 

The slovenly practice is the consequence of an unsuit- 
able dress. A lady in a hot room is saved from fainting 
by pulling off her glove ; a grenadier under a burning 
sun obtains a similar relief by turning down the stiff 
collar that oppresses him with heat, and teases him with 
its rigidity. 

But all these coxcombries are surpassed by an order 
issued at Portsmouth touching the beard : 

1 A clear space of two inches must be left between the 
comer of the mouth and the whisker, when whiskers are 
grown ; the chin, the under lip, and at least two inches 
of the upper part of the throat, must be clean shaven, so 
that no hair can be seen above the stock in that place.' 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 513 

That precision is very fine, that a clear space of two 
inches must be left between the corner of the mouth and 
the whisker, when whiskers are grown, as if, when whiskers 
are not grown, whiskers could nevertheless form a 
boundary. Alas ! a little shaving is a dangerous thing. 
Imagine how nice an affair it must be to train the beard 
to these precise two inches, or in default of that mathe- 
matical exactness to incur the penalties of excess. And 
how different must be the effect upon the different scales 
upon which nature makes visages — one man with an 
expanse of eight or nine inches from mouth to ear ; an- 
other with a sharp small face, hardly giving room for a 
tuft of hair in the same quarter ; one again with a neck 
like a giraffe, two inches of which only are to be shown 
clean shaved ; another with a neck like a cod-fish, two 
inches of which cannot be found anywhere ! 

It is curious how these frivolities occupy the attention 
of military authorities, while really important matters are 
neglected and suffered to run into the worst abuse. See 
here what a vehement concern there is about buttons, 
and stocks, and whiskers, and trumpery points of appear- 
ance, and compare it with the care of manners and habits 
as exhibited in the — Eegiment ! Major M., upon whom 
the spectacle of an officer dragged out of his bed and put 
on the mess-table to sing made so little impression, would 
doubtless have been inordinately scandalised if he had 
seen the same officer with an unbuttoned jacket, or any 
other disorder in his dress. Tenacity to fopperies and 
neglect of essentials is the vice of our Service. — (1854.) 



L L 



514 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



YOUTH AND AGE. 

Some few years ago, two young ladies at Taunton thought 
proper to kill an aged aunt, giving as a reason for so strong 
a family measure, that ' folks should not live too long, or 
if they did they must be taught better.' They were tried 
for murder, and acquitted in despite of the clearest evi- 
dence of guilt ; the jury probably sharing in the opinion 
that ' folks should not live too long, or should be taught 
better.' The Taunton nieces were but in advance of the 
world, which is now becoming mightily impatient of age, 
and disposed to thrust it aside or to put it down at least 
in public life. 

The bitter truth must be confessed, that old people are 
uut of fashion. The troops of friends which should ac- 
company old age have given place to troops of scoffers 
and revilers. Time was when little boys and girls used 
to exercise their hands in round text in such goodly 
maxims as ' honour old age,' or ' revere grey hairs :' but 
that is all gone by, and it is hardly possible now to take up a 
newspaper, without finding in it some dissertation tending 
to the contempt and scorn of age. Mr. Bright lately 
complained that we were overdone with old men. What 
ever goes amiss is traced to some one who has transgresse 
the rule of the Taunton nieces, and lived longer than he 
ought to have done. Indeed, the public indignation is so 
vehemently moved against the old that we might almost 
apprehend a sweeping measure, for the correction of the 
evil, the very opposite to Herod's massacre. A proscrip- 
tion, however, is to be expected at the very least, and all 
old people are advised to put themselves out of view in 






SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 515 

any public employment. The first question asked now, 
when anyone is named for an appointment, is : how old is 
he? Youth is looked upon as the first qualification. 
Why is not the Colonial Secretaryship filled up ? Because 
Lord Palmerston cannot find anyone young enough. We 
are coming to the empire of the babes and sucklings. 
Downing Street will be their kingdom. Formerly it was 
accounted a shame for a man to set his wits against a 
child : but now the child sets his wits against the man, and 
has out and out the best of it. The examinations lately 
established prove that admirable Crichtons are at present 
as plentiful as blackberries, that is to say among the 
young, while the old are all dunces, blunderers, and 
boobies. Indeed, the wonder is that any examiners can 
be found competent to question the youthful candidates ; 
and, let them ask them what they may, they have always 
answers, solving problems in a trice that have hitherto 
been thought to pass human understanding. The exa- 
miners are often, we are informed, appalled by the 
abstruse knowledge that bursts upon them ; which should 
make them reflect how well it is that the relations are 
not reversed, and they the examined instead of the ex- 
aminers. It is indeed well-nigh proved that the world 
should be turned topsy-turvy, and the minors placed up- 
permost. 

Is there any fallacy in this ? Are we the dupes of 
words ? As the antiquity of the world was the world's 
youth, so are the young older than the old in experience 
and wisdom ? Are we outstripped by the striplings ? 
Hood, in his ' Whims and Oddities,' has imagined a people 
among whom men of threescore, or so, become such 

L L 2 



516 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

dunces that their sons are obliged to send the old fellows to 
school again for the rudiments of education. Is it so, or 
ought it to be so with us ? Should our Field-Marshals 
be packed off to Sandhurst or Woolwich, and should a 
school the opposite to ragged, belaced and embroidered, 
be opened for sexagenarian statesmen ? 

But words are vile cheats. We talk of young and old 
as if with familiar knowledge. Who is young in the true 
sense of the word ? It is not the number of years which 
determines youth or age ; and truly says a French writer, 
there are none but the old who do not grow old. If you 
search for the youth of character, the youth of spirits, 
the youth of fancy, the youth of zest, you w T ill look for it 
in vain at such places as Eton, Westminster or Harrow, 
but you will find it in Lord Lyndhurst and Lord 
Brougham, who are nearly the last, if not the last, of the 
boys, as well as the first of the sages. 

A century ago, when we were young, for (incredible as 
it may appear) we were not always in the disgrace and 
dishonour of age, it was an established maxim that you 
could not put old heads on young shoulders : but the diffi- 
culty now would be to find a young head upon young 
shoulders. If the outward appearances of the head 
matched the inner furniture, we should see some of our 
formal little masters quitting school with grey beards and 
bald pates. The truth, then, is, after all, that we are old 
whether the age be sixteen or sixty, but that disgrace and 
dishonour belong peculiarly to those who have been 
old the longest. One has been old for a score of years, 
and another for threescore and ten : that is all the differ- 
ence. We by no means intend to justify immoderate 






SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 517 

longevity, which, as the Taunton ladies maintained, should 
in decency have its bounds ; but, before the utter pro- 
scription of age, it would be well to have a distinct un- 
derstanding of youth, such as youth now is, and to be 
quite sure that it is not the proscribed old age in disguise. 
—(1854.) 

CITY WIT. 

The oracle of this country is the Stock Exchange. 
Whether an event is auspicious or not, whether it pro-? 
mises weal or portends woe, is unerringly denoted by the 
rise or fall of stock. When Fortune makes a long face, 
there is a fall ; when she smiles there is a rise. The com- 
ponent parts of the wonderful body which so infallibly 
interprets the import of events, solving in a trice that 
difficult problem, quid utile, quid non, of course have 
their share in the aggregate wisdom ; and it is a matter 
of much curious interest to note the rare sagacity and 
penetration which these gentlemen display whenever 
occasion offers. 

The seven sages of the money market waited on the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer lately to hear the par- 
ticulars of a proposed loan, and it may be easily sup- 
posed that keen was the encounter of the wit sharpened 
by the occasion. 

The palm was however borne away by Mr. E, Thorn- 
ton, who has the gift of divination, if ever mortal man 
possessed it. His reach of penetration is superhuman, 
and would really favour the opinion that he lias the help 
of some familiar, some spirit which informs him of truths 
that lie beyond mortal ken. It is well for Mr. Thornton 
that lie lives in these days of table-turning and spirit- 



518 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

rapping, for if lie had been born two or three centuries 
ago, when witches and wizards were as plentiful as black- 
berries, he would inevitably have been burnt for profi- 
ciency in the black art. - 

Invited to consider the terms of a Government loan, 
this astonishing genius of the money market makes the 
discovery in a trice that the Government wants money ! 
How in the name of wonder did he find this out ? Has 
there been any breach of official confidence ? Or is the 
man directly inspired by Minerva ? How in the world 
could he, by mere mortal wit, arrive at the bold conclu- 
sion that a Government which proposes to borrow wants 
money ? 

Of the quickness of the Irish, sometimes appearing like 
intuition, there are many examples, one of not the least 
remarkable of which is as follows : 

Irish lady A to B. c Sure Mrs. C. has been brought to 
bed of a child. Guess, is it a boy or a girl ? ' — Miss 
B. ' It is a girl.' — Miss A. ' No now, you are out, it is 
not a girl.' — Miss B. 6 Ah, now I have it, and no mistake, 
It's a boy, that's what it is.' — Miss A. ' Sure some one 
told you.' 

Brilliant as this is in the way of surmise, it is incom- 
parably surpassed by the bold discovery that a Govern- 
ment borrows money because it wants it, and for no other 
reason. The revelation took away the breath of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, or lie might have availed 
himself of the Irish lady's reply, and said, Some one told 
you. As it was, Sir G, C. Lewis, so found out by the 
sorcerer, could only murmur that the public would draw 
what conclusion it liked, even to the extent that borrowing 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 519 

argued wanting ; and with this prodigy of City wit the 
interview terminated, Mr. Thornton having exhausted in 
three words all that could be thought, conceived, and 
said.— (1856.) 

HOW NOT TO DO IT. 

The report of the Chelsea Commissioners is a manual or 
guide-book to the science of ' How not to do it.' Let it 
be re-issued by some enterprising publisher as ' The 
Officer — his Duties, and How not to do them J 

The directions are perfect. We had an army provided, 
as far as appearances went, with every requisite for success 
and subsistence. It had, besides the Generals who were 
to lead it to victory, a host of other Generals to take care 
of it — Adjutant-Generals, Quartermaster-Generals, Com- 
missary-Generals, with acting-assistant sub-deputies, and 
other subordinates with half the letters of the alphabet 
stuck after their names, to find it in stores, to clothe 
and provision it. What more was wanting ? Nothing. 
There were the executive officers, and there the troops 
requiring the stores, clothing and food. The only task 
that remained was ingeniously to discover the way 'not 
to give them.' 

That was soon devised, and the Chelsea Commissioners 
have approved of the device as in full accordance with 
the rules of the service. The Adjutant-General did not 
properly clothe his army, the Quartermaster-General did 
not supply it with suitable stores, and the Commissary- 
General did not sufficiently feed it ; but each and all 
called upon somebody else to do something else, and the 
somebody in his turn shifted the responsibility, and 
the something was not done after all. The Adjutant, 



520 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

Quartermaster, and Commissary-General are admirable 
officers notwithstanding, and must not be blamed. 

The old woman in the nursery rhyme, whose return 
home from market was delayed by the refusal of her pig 
to get over the stile, called upon the animal and vegetable 
kingdom, and the elements to boot, to help her, just as 
the Staff in the Crimea called upon heaven and earth to 
help them. The water would not quench the fire, and 
the fire would not burn the stick, and the stick would not 
beat the pig, and so on. In like manner Airey could not 
help Wetherall, and Wetherall could not help Gordon, and 
Gordon could not help Filder, and Filder could not help 
himself. So they all came to a dead lock, till private 
charity stepped in to give them breathing time to recover 
from the panic their own incapacity had brought upon 
them. 

A Quartermaster-General is, we suppose, the only 
official extant who receives, without examination, mate- 
rials upon the fitness or durability of which thousands of 
human lives under his charge may depend. According 
to the principles of ' how not to do it,' he has merely to 
make requisitions. If he asks for bread and receives a 
stone, or vice versa, that is nothing to him. He may 
gravely serve out Macadam for rations, and supply biscuit 
for making- roads, and to him no blame can possibly 
attach. And so with everybody impugned. Considering 
how admirably, indeed, the Commissioners throughout 
their report sustain the grand principle of ' how not to do 
it,' we must really think it matter of some marvel that 
they should ever have been brought to make their report 
at all. They have certainly done that, and it is a piece of 






SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 521 

work not likely to be forgotten during the present gene- 
ration at least. — (1856.) 

KITE-FLYIXG. 

Whex Lord Manners went to Ireland as Chancellor, and 
heard the Irish lawyers talking of kites and kite-flying, he 
asked what they meant. ' My lord,' said Mr. Plunket, 
then the leader of the bar, ' there is a great difference 
between flying kites in England and in Ireland ; in 
England the wind raises the kite, in Ireland the kite raises 
the wind/ The practice referred to, however, is now un- 
fortunately common to both countries. — (1856.) 

A PROGRESS IX GOOD TASTE. 

The Prince of Wales has been taking the tour of the 
Western Counties in a distinguished manner, most sensibly 
and laudably distinguished from the established princely 
manner of doing these holiday things. He seems to have 
gone to see, and not to be seen ; with the object of 
viewing the beauties and wonders of nature, not of making 
a rival wonder of himself, for flunkeys to run after and 
fools to gaze at. He travels incog, with his tutor, dropping 
the Eoyal Highness, and never once wearing his plume 
during the trip ; in short, just like any other well- 
educated and well-bred Englishman of his tender years. 
We know the ways of too many of our countrymen and 
countrywomen too well not to feel assured that it would 
have pleased them much better if the Prince had travelled 
in a different style, in a chariot and six, with galloping 
outriders in scarlet, and all the pomp and circumstance 
without which a former Prince of Wales would not have 



522 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

taken a short airing. His Eoyal Highness seems to have 
moved pretty rapidly from place to place, which was of 
course a necessary precaution to escape the pursuit of the 
curious ; there being no secresy like celerity, as Bacon has 
remarked. The young Prince was very near being caught 
at Sidmouth, but, immediately on being recognised, he 
took flight, starting in a stage-coach for Exmouth, and 
thus adroitly eluding the flunkeys. No doubt it was a 
neck-and-neck affair in more places than one. A provin- 
cial paper complains, in a tone of affliction, that ' the in- 
habitants of Wimbourn and Weymouth were not aware 
of the rank of their visitor until after his Eoyal Highness 
had left their respective towns.' 

The Prince was favoured by fortune. Only think of 
all that the inhabitants of those towns would have done, 
nay, said and done, had they been aware that a Prince, 
an actual live Prince of Wales, was coming to see them. 

A local journal gives vent to its feelings in the following 
highly amusing paragraph, though little intended to 
amuse, the writer being no more capable of speaking of 
princes in any tone but the gravest, than in any but the 
most imposing language : — 

6 The Prince was accompanied by three attendants, but 
such was the studied strictness of his incognito that he 
took his departure before the loyal inhabitants of the 
town became at all aware of the honour conferred upon 
them by the visit of the heir presumptive to the Crown of 
these realms. The young Prince perambulated the streets 
with the jaunty, independent air of an Englishman, and 
chatted, without the smallest restraint and the slightest 
show of formal condescension, to some of the poorest of 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 523 

the inhabitants ; and he entered into a personal negotia- 
tion with the owner of an extraordinarily sagacious dog, 
with a view to the purchase of the animal.' 

This account of himself will probably entertain the 
1 Heir Presumptive to the Crown of these realms,' as much 
as anything he saw in the West. We have only to add 
that we highly approve of all the princely proceedings so 
admirably recorded, — the walk to Torquay, the excursion 
to the Eoman camp at Wimbourn, the hearty luncheons 
eaten with an appetite worthy of his lineage, but, above 
all, of the ' personal negotiation with the owner of the 
sagacious dog, with a view to the purchase of the animal' 
—(1856.) 

THE NEWEST STREET NUISAXCE. 

Master Tommy's carriage ! — Master Johnny's perambu- 
lator coming up ! — Master Freddy ? s stops the way ! 
Masters Johnny, Freddy, and Tommy, in their perambu- 
lators, stop everybody's way at present. The Eoman 
satirist limits the dangers of the streets to a thousand — 
'mille pericula sa3va3 urbis ' — but London has a thousand 
and one, since the perambulator was added to the list of 
nuisances. Our babes are just now the greatest enemies 
of human progress. Masters they may well be called, 
those forward infants, with their pushing maids behind 
them, who over-ride us at every turn. 

Niitant altae populoque minantur. 

We are safer amonof the omnibuses than in the em- 
barras of go-carts, and beg to be informed which is now 
the carriage-way and which the foot- way. The child is 
said to be ' the father of the man,' and we hope we have 
a proper filial respect for infancy ; but all ages have their 



524 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

rights, and one of them clearly is to walk the flags without 
exposure to the wheels of any vehicle whatsoever, whether 
drawn by horses or driven by nurses. We protest against 
this innovation, which is only another form of curacy, the 
perambulator being the nurse-maid's curate, doing for her 
the work she is paid for doing with her own arms, and 
which she is very well able to perform. The thing is de- 
moralising in every respect : it teaches bad lessons. Not 
only is the child taught from his tender years to put the 
cart before the horse, but the seeds of vanity and extra- 
vagance are sown in his little mind, for we all know the 
absurd and mischievous importance attached in England 
by all classes to the keeping of a carriage of some de- 
scription, though only a gig. In these days, however, of 
feeble administration we hardly expect that our complaint 
upon this subject will be of much avail. The nuisance 
is indeed one that seems to demand something of the 
energy of a Herod ; and the most we can reasonably hope 
is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may be induced 
to put a spoke in Master Johnny's wheel by a judicious 
tax upon this provoking innovation. — (1856.) 

THE GREATNESS THAT NEVER DESCENDS TO READ 
NEWSPAPERS. 

A respectable man has been denned one who keeps a 
gig : but a cut far above your respectable man is the man 
who does not read a newspaper. Members of the two 
Houses of Parliament never read newspapers. They 
would not, indeed, touch a newspaper with a pair of 
tongs. No great man, no one pretending to importance, 
ever avowed that he read anything of which he had to 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 52-3 

complain, or upon which he had to comment, in a news- 
paper. It is always ' brought under his notice,' or ' his 
attention was drawn to it.' Never does it come naturally 
in his way in the course of his daily reading. The fact is 
always brought to his knowledge, as his articles of dress 
and use are brought to his hands. He is waited on with 
the news concerning himself, and would no more think 
of learning it by the use of his own eyes than he would 
think of brushing his own clothes or cleaning his own 
boots. All great folks have got friends who read for 
them. We are always mightily impressed when we see 
or hear that some one ' has had his attention drawn to 
certain comments ' which everyone else has read with his 
own eyes ; but seldom have we been more struck than 
by this commencement of a letter to the ' Daily News,' 
bearing the signature of Morris Moore : — 

6 Sir, — Certain passages of your first leading article of 
the 29th of November have been brought to my notice.' 

How grand this is ! Certain passages brought to my 
notice. How high and mighty ! A man of no conse- 
quence, above all of no self-consequence, would have been 
searching all the newspapers for every syllable concerning 
himself, but Mr. Morris Moore, who has had a whole 
police after him, is waited upon with ' certain passages ' 
on a silver salver. After all, Mr. Morris Moore ought to 
be thankful to the abominable Prussian police, for if they 
had not laid hands on him, and made for him a grievance, 
the noise of which resounds through the world, rivalling 
the wails of Sir C. Napier, he never could have assumed 
the sublime airs of his address to the ' Daily News.' He 
woke in the Berlin watch-house and found himself famous, 



526 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



and past reading newspapers on his own account. In his 
incarceration he scorned the couch on which 4 delators ' 
might have stretched themselves, but now he has his own 
' delators ' to denounce to him passages in newspapers un- 
pleasing to his self-love. This is a step in greatness well 
worth a night in the watch-house. — (1856.) 



A SAD CASE. 

Madlle. Delauney, in her delightful memoirs, refers to 
the period of her incarceration in the Bastile as ' the happy 
days when we were so miserable.' It is indeed the 
inveterate habit of human nature to place happiness any- 
where but in the present. The pleasures of hope and the 
pleasures of memory are themes for poets: but to imagine 
pleasures of the present would surpass all inventive powers. 
Whether we look forward or whether we look back, distance 
lends enchantment to the view. Every man has his grief 
either for something he has left behind, or for something he 
cannot attain, and none surely of the former class is so 
unhappy as the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He 
does not ordinarily show it ; indeed he might easily be mis- 
taken for a cheerful or even a gay man : but the canker is in 
the bud, nevertheless. His high seat in judicature is not 
to his mind. He never sits down anywhere, indeed, that it 
does not sadly recall to his recollection the happy days 
when he sat for Southampton. Sitting for any other place 
might not have been much, but sitting for Southampton was 
a bliss of a supreme and unique sort. To the world, look- 
ing merely at the surface, it may appear a mighty fine thing 
to be Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, but what is the 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 527 

dignity to him who confesses that he cannot hope ever 
again to represent Southampton ? 

In the lang;ua£re of lovers there is nothing more tender, 
more fervid, than the terms in which the Chief Justice 
speaks of his attachment to dear Southampton. His sun 
has set with his separation from that beloved borough. 

It is sad, indeed, to learn that so deserving a man has 
lost his greatest happiness past all retrieval, for, as the 
Chief Justice says, he cannot reasonably hope to sit again 
for Southampton. As the poet sings, ' other griefs to this 
are jolly.' Southampton lost for ever, what is there to 
live for ? The Common Pleas, bah ! What makes the 
case sadder is that the deprivation has been spontaneous. 
Sir A. Cockburn was told, indeed, that certain warnings 
were not to be neglected, and those pestilent counsellors 
' wise and anxious friends ' advised him to relinquish the 
pride and joy of his life, and accept his present barren 
dignity. Little did the world divine the sacrifice made 
in this sad election. Let us pray that even now the Chief 
Justice of the Common Pleas may not run away from 
his place to present himself again for dear Southampton. 
The tendency to revert to the first love is proverbial, and 
when was there a first love like that of Cockburn for his 
Southampton ? 

' Something too much of this,' as Hamlet says. The 
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas may well regret the 
political stage on which he played so distinguished a part, 
but perhaps a way may be found of restoring him to legis- 
lative activity and usefulness, though the avenue through 
Southampton is closed, alas ! for ever. The House of 



528 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



Lords is not, indeed, so suited to the genius of the Chief 
Justice as the House of Commons was to the brilliant Sir 
A. Coekburn : but still there would be scope for his great 
abilities in that House, especially in the field of law reform, 
for which he has every qualification. Such a man is 
wanted in the House of Lords as a fellow-labourer with 
Lord Campbell.— (1857.) 



THE FOKEIGN" VIEW OF OUR CASE. 

The husband who meekly assented to his wife's truism, 
that no one was without a fault, provoked the indignant 
question, ' And pray, sir, what fault have I ? ' Our 
country is at this moment very much like the lady angry at 
the acceptance of her own words. She has confessed her- 
self chastised by Heaven for her sins, and the world readily 
and eagerly taking her at her word, says Habemus confiten- 
tem., and expatiates on the offences that have brought down 
such a heavy punishment, the ' mighty pains to mighty 
mischiefs due.' England deserves it all, and more to boot, 
is the general cry of Europe. We are like the ass in the 
assembly of beasts convened to discover the peccant 
cause of a pestilence, who confessed to having committed 
a trespass on a meadow, and the robbery of some blades 
of grass ; upon which the wolf howled out for judgment of 
death against so heinous a criminal. It is in vain to ap- 
peal against the sentence passed against us, not in default 
indeed, but upon actual confession, and awkward and in- 
effective are the pleadings of the Press against the conclu- 
sions, the premises of which have been laid by ourselves. 
—(1857.) 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 529 



THE MAN IX THE RIGHT PLACE AT LAST. 

When we ventured to question the appointment of 
General Ashburnham to the command in China, we little 
knew on which side the fault really lay. We thought the 
command too great for the General, but it turns out that 
the General is too great for the command. ' ^Estuat 
infelix angusto limite Hong Kong.'' He is an Alexander 
in want of another world for his conquests. Finding the 
China war too small for his great military capacity, the 
General hied him to India for employment, but could 
not there get fitted with a suitable command. He was 
like a bagman travelling for orders ; — Ashburnham in 
search of command ! The pursuit was vain, and, finding 
no theatre for his vast military genius in the East, the 
General perforce had to bend his course back to the 
West, and to shame his country with the spectacle of 
great talent greatly wanted and culpably unemployed. 
And he has come as Napoleon returned from Egypt, in 
the very nick of time, for who does not feel how much 
our ticklish relations with France are improved by our 
having Ashburnham with us, ready at hand to be our 
Marlborough or Wellington upon any emergency ? What 
the China war was to the sudden Indian exigency, the 
return of our Ashburnham is to our position with France. 
The blustering sabreurs on the other side of the Channel 
would have thought twice of asking to be led against 
England if they had known that Ashburnham was again 
within call of the War Office. 

It has been objected, indeed, that he lias run away 
from his post, and thereby rendered himself liable to mili- 

M M 



530 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

tary law. In this lie resembles Ceesar, to whom Lucan 
ascribes 'nescia virtus stare loco' — a restless virtue : though 
in Caesar's case it was not quite the impatience of one place 
with the view of getting a better. But it is rather too 
unjust on the part of those who blamed his appointment 
to blame also his resignation of it, if we may be allowed to 
give that name to what would be called desertion in a 
private soldier, whose fidelity to his duties were of incom- 
parably less moment. Cavil as you may, it is undeniable 
that either the man was in the right place in China, or 
that he is in the right place in Pall Mall. And for our 
own parts, having always a turn for optimism, and con- 
tent with things as they are, we incline to the latter 
conclusion. As for the Minister of War, of whom our 
Ashburnham is as great a favourite as of the god Mars 
himself, we may suppose him expressing himself in the 
words of the poet we have before quoted : — 

Quamvis digressu yeteris confusus amici, 
Laudo tarnen . 

The thing to be commended, according to the version 
of Gifford, was giving to the chosen locality ' one virtuous 
fugitive ' — the fugitive, in this case, from the scene of 
action in China. 

But has he not done good service ? Nay, what better ser- 
vice could he possibly have performed ? He knows best 
what he is fit for, and he comes home. What more, what 
better would you have ? He recalls himself. Would the 
Horse Guards have done as much ? He cancels his own 
appointment. Oh ! excellent judgment. Nothing in his 
command became him like unto the leaving of it. When- 
ever the war with China is crowned with success, the first 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 531 

cause of the triumph will by impartial history be ascribed 
to Ashburnham, who withdrew himself from the conduct 
of the operations at the most critical juncture. 

The c Times ' does not give the General any credit for 
his refusal of the Lahore command on the ground of the 
superior claims of other officers, and ascribes all his con- 
duct to a settled purpose to seize any pretext to return 
home. That he was bound in duty to remain in Asia till 
recalled is not indeed to be disputed : but this is not the 
first instance in our military annals of a brilliant act of 
disobedience promotive of the most important interests of 
the service. In homely phrase, ' we must not look the 
gift horse in the mouth.' Let us be grateful that things 
have fallen out as they have done, and that General Ash- 
burnham is where it is best he should be for the triumph 
of our arms, and the success of the war. — (1858.) 

SOME MORAL AND SOCIAL PECULIARITIES OF SCOTLAND. 

The national character of the Scotch deservedly stands 
high. They are especially remarkable for industry, pru- 
dence, sagacity, and far-sightedness. The blessings of 
education are more generally diffused amongst them than 
in any other European community. Yet Scotland has 
really been the scene of some social phenomena which 
are far from giving proof or promise of a corresponding 
superiority in virtue or happiness. 

One of their most striking peculiarities is the Pha- 
risaical observance of the Sabbath. We all remember 
how a lady of rank was refused a place in a Sunday mail 
train, although her known and avowed object was to 
attend the bedside of a dying father ; which, if anything 

M M 2 



532 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

does, surely comes within the Scriptural exception of 
works of necessity ; and we should have thought that 
the burst of indignation excited throughout the rest of 
the empire by this incident might have read an improving 
lesson to the sternest of Sabbatarians. Yet when, not 
many weeks since, a party of excursionists landed from a 
steamer at Glasgow, they were hooted, hissed, and sub- 
jected to every indignity short of personal violence, by 
a mob, alleged to have been set on by some of the 
Glasgow clergy. During the last general election the 
chances of a candidate were seriously impaired by a false 
report of his having once danced a reel on a Sunday even- 
ing; a charge which led to a long and angry contro- 
versy, although it was eventually softened down into a 
suspicion or insinuation of his having been a visitor at 
the house where the alleged enormity was perpetrated. 
In illustration of the same spirit of asceticism we may 
also refer to Lord Haddo's and Mr. Kinnaird's attempt 
to suppress, or stigmatise, what most people of sense, and 
all cultivators of the fine arts, have agreed to consider 
an essential part of a painter's or sculptor's education, 
namely, the study of living models. 

Alongside of these persevering efforts to enforce sanctity, 
gravity, and decorum, we are sorry to be obliged to place 
the portentous quantity of whisky consumed in dram- 
drinking in Scotland, and the startling proportion of 
illegitimate births, which are confessedly on the increase 
in many of the most important and populous districts. 

We have been deemed, uncharitable for suggesting that 
some connection may possibly be traced between the 
undue strictness and the culpable laxity ; in other words 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 533 

that ascetic and sanctimonious feelings, however sincere, 
have been unconsciously indulged at the expense of 
sobriety and chastity. But history abounds with proofs 
that, when human nature is too heavily tasked or bur- 
dened, it either breaks down, or, by a natural rebound, is 
carried over to the opposite extreme. ' Those passions and 
tastes,' says Lord Macaulay, ' which under the rule of the 
Puritans had been gratified by stealth, broke forth with 
ungovernable violence as soon as the check was with- 
drawn. Men flew to frivolous amusements and to crim- 
inal pleasures with the greediness which long and enforced 
abstinence naturally produces. Little restraint was im- 
posed by public opinion. For the nation, nauseated with 
cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity, and still 
smarting from the recent tyranny of rulers austere in life 
and powerful in prayer, looked for a time with compla- 
cency on the softer and gayer vices.' 

ISFor were the immediate and direct results of Puritan 
manners and legislation more successful than the indirect 
or subsequent ones ; for we must not be deceived by the 
outward and visible signs of piety and austerity. The 
expelled devils (if they were expelled) of profaneness and 
licentiousness were succeeded by a fiercer and equally 
dangerous troop ; and society rather lost than gained 
when the jovial bumper of the cavalier was exchanged 
for the solitary dram of the military saint. 

The monotony of intellectual labour and mechanical 
drudgery must be relieved in some fashion for the sake of 
botli mind and body. The longing for change and the 
thirst for excitement are irrepressible ; and we are surely 
justified in believing that all the gay, beautiful, and 



534 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

enlivening objects which we see around us were not 
created to be shunned. Would the finest of our 
faculties and the highest of our aspirations, especially 
those which find vent in painting, sculpture, music, and 
song, have been conceded or permitted to us, if the most 
charming productions of genius were to be proscribed, 
and its very cultivation to be punished as a sin ? 

Sir Walter Scott, who had carefully studied the charac- 
ter of his countrymen, has left more than one suggestive 
picture of the baneful influence of their self-denying or- 
dinances. In ' Eeclgauntlet ' we have the appalling port- 
rait of Mr. Thomas Trumball, who holds forth against the 
heinous sin of Sabbath-breaking. by way of preface to a 
bout of ribaldry and profanity ; and in the ' Heart of Mid- 
Lothian,' the inopportune denunciation of dancing by 
David Deans is represented as one leading cause of poor 
Effie's ruin. 

It is remarkable that the only schemes or measures for 
the suppression of inebriety that have even temporarily 
prospered, have proceeded, like Father Mathew's self- 
imposed and highly honourable mission, on the voluntary 
principle. The sole weapon of the promoters has been 
persuasion, and they have exclusively addressed them- 
selves to the reason and well-understood interests of 
mankind. Scotland has persevered in trying what can 
be effected by harshness. She has had Forbes Mac- 
kenzie's Act, and she is one of the very few countries in 
which simple incontinence is criminally punishable. Yet, 
up to the present time, .she has undeniably failed ; and it 
is well worthy of the grave consideration of her railway 
directors, assemblies of elders, and various boards for 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 535 

self-government, lay or spiritual, whether it would not 
be advisable to fall back upon that milder and more 
tolerant mode of dealing with human frailty which is 
sanctioned by Scripture, and recommended by examples 
drawn indiscriminately from the entire current of ancient 
and modern history. — (1858.) 

THE BATH AND THE GARTER. 

When Lord Melbourne left office it was without any 
honour of the Crown, except indeed the honour of having 
served it faithfully, and trained the young Queen in the 
constitutional path which she has since held so uniformly 
and steadily. Lord Melbourne conferred ribbons and 
titles, and he did not think it was for him to take the 
baubles of which he had been the dispenser. Lord 
Derby is of another opinion. This is a matter of taste, 
and perhaps the Garter is a consolation and set-off for the 
vote of want of confidence. The Crown and the Com- 
mons take a very different measure of Lord Derby's 
deserts, the one delighting to honour, the other removing 
him from her Majesty's counsels. 

The Order of the Bath, which has been conferred 
upon Lord Malmesbury and Sir John Pakington, is. as 
we all know, a decoration intended to reward eminent 
services, particularly of a military character. Is it not 
natural that the Minister who so successfully preserved 
the peace of Europe should aspire to a warlike decoration, 
or that the hero of Dover should look with envy upon 
the order which glitters on the breast of him of Bala- 
clava ? Our only surprise is that those distinguished states- 
men were satisfied to receive, as an acknowledgment of 



536 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. , 

their great services, the same order as was conferred upon 
such a man as Sir Henry Lawrence, who only saved the 
Indian empire. 

Miss Freer, in one of her latest works, tells us that the 
Order of St. Michael the Archangel, instituted by Louis 
XL, was so lavishly and indiscriminately distributed that 
it came to be called ' Collier a toutes betes.'' 

Let us be proud and thankful to think that the Order 
of the Bath can never by possibility earn a similar 
appellation. — (1859.) 

THE GREAT STREET NUISANCE. 

A Persian Ambassador, hearing the tuning of instru- 
ments at the Italian opera, was in ecstasies. The music was 
divine. But, when the din ceased and the magnificent 
overture of Don Giovanni commenced, his Excellency 
was mightily displeased. ' Pooh, pooh,' said he, ' this is 
poor stuff, not to be compared with the first piece, which 
was worthy of Paradise.' 

We cannot but suspect that our worthy magistrate, 
Mr. Brounhton, has a taste for music similar to that of 
the Persian. In dealing with Mr. Babbage's complaint 
of the annoyance of a brass band, Mr. Broughton laid 
down the law that these brass bands are not like the 
hurdy-gurdy s and some of the barrel organs, which play 
loudly and out of tune. ' These German performers,' 
continued the magistrate, ' play remarkably well, and in 
consequence thereof are encouraged by many who have 
a love for music' We cannot dispute the assertion, as 
Ave cannot prove a negative, and there may be brass bands 
which deserve tins praise ; all we can say is, that it has 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 537 

not been our good fortune to hear them. The bands by 
which we are besieged day and night produce sounds 
having a most wonderful resemblance to the squeaking 
and grunting commixed of a herd of swine. There are 
ears that they may please undoubtedly, and the ears of 
Midas would certainly be of the number. But we do 
not believe that their profit is made of the pleasure they 
give to a taste for music which is not shocked by offences 
against tune, but, on the contrary, by the torture they 
inflict on ears which can distinguish bad music from good, 
and also by the interruption of any business or study 
requiring undivided attention. A gentleman employed 
as Mr. Babbage would generally be must either buy off 
these tormentors or bring them before the magistrate, 
who gives or withholds protection, according, not to the 
letter of the law but, to his good or bad taste for music. 
A better expedient than either of those we have named is 
to answer the first demand for money in these terms : ' I 
am delighted to hear you play ; the oftener you come to 
my door, and the longer you stay at it performing, the 
better I shall be pleased, but I make it a matter of prin- 
ciple never to give any money for the treat.' 

Unfortunately Mr. Babbage cannot resort to this strata- 
gem, as he has made his hostility to the street nuisance 
notorious by his vain endeavours to protect himself 
against it. What is the unhappy mathematician to do ? 
Mr. Broughton considerately asks him whether he cannot 
take refuge for study in some apartment at the back of 
his house. Has lie no cellar to which he can fly, no 
dust-hole where lie may pursue his studies out of earshot 
of the tormentors ? It is for the German vagabonds to 



538 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

lord it over the streets and front apartments. We call 
them by a bad name because they are as remarkable for 
their ruffianly conduct as their villanous noises. If there 
be any truth in Shakespeare, and music soothes the 
savage breast, the brutality of these fellows alone argues 
them unversed in the humanising art. Mark a troop of 
them walking along with the poles with which they sup- 
port their books, and see how they hustle all who appear 
unable to resent their insolence, and how also they con- 
trive to strike blows with their poles and instruments, 
pretending accident. This is their most successful instru- 
mental performance. — (1859.) 

HONESTY NOT THE BEST POLICY. 

How often is this text to be illustrated P A woman pawns 
some shirts entrusted to her to be made up. She is sen- 
tenced to a fortnight's imprisonment. The report of the 
case is an advertisement. Subscriptions pour in, and at 
the end of the term of punishment she appears at the 
police court to receive her reward in the sums of money 
contributed by charitable persons for her use. Had she re- 
sisted temptation and refrained from pawning the property 
confided to her, she would have remained unfriended, un- 
succoured in her misery. How many poor creatures are 
there at this very moment, who are submitting to the 
cruellest privations and hardships rather than commit a 
dishonesty ; and what an example for them is this ? And 
we should like to ask the charitable persons who sub- 
scribed in this instance whether they would have given 
the woman the same assistance to prevent her lapse from 
honesty. We suspect that few would do so. Charity 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 539 

would not be touched by a knowledge before the offence 
in the same lively way in which it is moved by the know- 
ledge after the fact. Home Tooke told a story in point 
of an applicant for admission to the Magdalen, who, upon 
being received into the institution, expressed her gratitude 
that she was saved from ruin. The governess, alarmed 
by this intimation, questioned the girl and, finding her 
innocent, informed her that the rules of the institution 
did not allow of her receiving its advantages. In a short 
time she returned with undeniable claims to admission. — 
(1859.) 

THE MINISTER AND THE PRESS. 

Horace Walpole frightened an old lady out of her wits 
by observing that there was a strong smell of thieves in 
her house. We have amongst us persons, not old women, 
but high and mighty statesmen, who take a similar alarm 
at the scent of the Press. There are people who have an 
instinctive and disagreeable consciousness of the presence 
of a cat, and there are Ministers who are in like way 
apprised of and disturbed by the presence of a reporter. 
For example, a deputation, armed with a reporter, is to 
the Duke of Newcastle what the Embassy to Pekin, with 
its escort of troops, was to the Chinese. The Colonial 
Minister protected himself against the insidious approaches 
with a barrier not to be forced. He said to the Cape 
deputation, there is ' a chiel amongst you taking notes,' 
and explained that a reporter took away his breath, and 
reduced him to speechlessness. Whether he spoke with 
or without reserve was to depend on the presence or 
absence of the reporter. We confess our inability to 



540 SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 

understand this. As line ladies are privileged to faint, 
or go into fits, at the sight of a mouse or spicier, so a 
Minister may be frighted from his propriety by the pre- 
sence of a reporter ; but then let him avow his antipathy 
and act upon it alone. So the Duke of Newcastle might 
have said to the Cape deputation, ' Gentlemen, there is a 
fly in the pot of ointment ; you have brought the Press 
with you, and it is a thing I cannot endure. The Press 
is all very well in its place ; very useful and all that in its 
way ; but, in an official chamber, it is as much out of 
its sphere as a pig in a flower garden.' This might 
be arbitrary, but would at least be intelligible ; not so 
the Colonial Minister's declaration that his reserve or 
unreserve would depend on the presence or absence of 
the reporter. Surely a gentleman who intends to say 
what he thinks and means to do, can have no objection 
to- the exactest account of his words. ' Do not pin me 
to my words, and I will talk freely to you,' is a condition 
to be answered thus : ' Your talking freely to us will be 
of no use, if you are not to be fixed to your words.' 
What is the difference between reserve and unreserve? 
Unreserve with a man of honour must be the full truth, 
and what harm can there be in having the whole truth 
exactly noted down if it be proper to be spoken at all ? 
We do not mean to question a Minister's right to reserve. 
There are many occasions when a statement of views or 
intentions may be unseasonable and impolitic, but what 
we question is the reserve, not because the subject calls 
for it, but merely because, the departure from it to a frank 
statement would be put in black and white. The Per- 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 541 

sians have an expressive phrase for a certain sort of loose 
talk ; they call it ' throwing words into the air.' Now 
a Minister who tells a deputation that he cannot speak 
without reserve to them in the presence of a reporter, 
seems to us to say, 'I will throw words into the air to 
amuse you, provided there is no one amongst you who 
has the skill to catch them, and make them tangible 
things.' 

And to what does the objection to reporters amount? 
Every member of a deputation is a reporter, aye, and 
a volunteer reporter, too, for the Press. Of a score of 
gentlemen who have represented a case to a Minister, and 
heard his questions, answers, comments, and intimations, no 
two will agree as to the expressions and their purport. All 
will go away with different versions of what has passed. 
The sanguine will put a favourable colour on the Minister's 
words, those of a different temperament will report them 
of an opposite tendency. All will be reporters, and bad 
reporters, not only from want of habit and skill, but 
because of their very interest in the subject matter. The 
newspaper reporter is an uninterested witness, whose 
business it is to note with exactness what he hears. Of 
course, if a Minister talks loosely and at random, this 
record must be extremely inconvenient to him ; but how 
anyone can object to it who has confidence in his own 
discretion and the purpose of sincerity, we are utterly at 
a loss to conceive. And we should have thought the 
Duke of Newcastle one of the men the least likely to 
make the objection for the reasons assigned. 

After the affair of the Deputation respecting the recall 
of the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, at the 



542 



SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



Colonial Office, any deputation that waits upon a Minister 
without the help of a reporter may be considered as going 
on a fool's errand. The attempt to exclude the Press 
ought to provoke deputations to insist on the presence of 
the Press.— (1859.) 



INDEX 



ALBERT, Prince, attacks on, 243 
Ally, a new, 241 
Anglesey, Lord, 114 
Army reform, 209 
Art, fine, 431 

Assassinations, the worse of two, 
387 



BALLOT, the, 225 
Behaviour, rewards for good, 

469 
Bentinck, Lord George, 98 
— , and Xenophon, 195 
Bill-stickers beware ! 416 
Bishops, 288 
Blue-books, 212 
Brougham's, Lord, flowers of speech, 

174 
Budget, the moralised, 236 
Byron's statue and the Abbey, 313 

CANNING, George, 71 
Case, a sad, 526 
— , foreign view of our, 528 
Catechism, episcopal, 304 
Charity abroad, 430 
— , intolerant, 319 
Chartists, the:— Demonstration re- 
versed, 216 
Church, a free, of England, 296 
— rates, 304 
Civilisation, signs of, 405 
Compliment, a royal, 185 



Contrition and egg-sauce, 286 

Cookery, English, and French wines, 
486 

Corn Laws, 156, 157 

Counsel, privileges of, 334 

Court, the Palace, 368 

Criminals, comforting comparison 
for, 350 

Crushing necessary to mental ele- 
vation, 417 

Custom, rogues of, 413 

DEBTS, New World way to pay 
Old World, 384 
Derby Administration, the, 242 
Diet, discoveries in, 467 
Disraeli, Mr., his manifesto, 201 

— and the farmers, 232 
Doctor, the skin, 187 
Dodge, the Doncaster, 281 
Dogs, fate of the, 510 
Dream, the, 402 

Duel, the triangular, 383 
Duellists, the, and the. cock phea- 
sant, 495 
Duke, melancholy case of a, 412 
Dukes to the front ! 209 

— and oxen, 477 
Durham, Lord, 80 

— , his moderation, 122 

ELDON, Lord, 413 
Ellenborough, Lord, 259 
Ellesmere's, Lord, letter, 488 



544 



INDEX. 



England, Old, wooden heads of, 410 
Espartero and the Bourbons, 381 
Etiquette, the wars of, 377 
Evidence, medical, in criminal trials, 

372 
Extenuating circumstances, 359 



FAINEANT Administration, the, 
176 
Farmer, the unprotected, 232 
Farmers' friends, cruel sufferings of, 

167 
Federalism explained, 473 
Feeding on reputations, 507 
Fellowes, Dr., 25 
Financiers, loves of the, 275 
Finsbury, the man for, 426 
Foie gras, municipal, 422 
Fool, the Kafir, and Cape Governor, 
, 490 

Fopperies and essentials,' 511 
Francis, case of, 346 
Free Trade, 198 
Friends, save us from our, 495 

GALLOWS, a plea for the, 353 
Garter, the, 472 
— and the Bath, 535 
George IV., 75 

Gladstone, Mr., secession of, 477 
Gough's, Lord, last exploit, 226 
Graham, Sir James, 173, 188, 419 
Graveyard, exclusive system in the, 

323 
Greatness above reading newspapers, 

524 
Greek people, our wrongs to the, 

398 



HAVELOCK, General, 117 
Holland, Lord, 83 
Honesty not the best policy, 538 
Hook or by crook, by, 314 
Humanity at sea, 429 



Hume, thanks for a, 171 
Hunt, John, 96 

IF not, why not? 124 
India, value of directors, 267 
— , glory and embarrassment, 261 
Ireland, examples for Young, 221 

JENNERS, the court of, 367 
Jews in Parliament, 146 
Jokes, injured, 493 
Jury, trial by, 358 
Justice, alderinanation of, 371 



■jTITE-FLYING, 



521 



LABOURER, the agricultural, 465 
Law, immorality of, 326 
Lawyers at loggerheads, 360 
Liberty, the tree of, 121 
Literature, immoral, 428 
•Lords, House of, the, 206 
Lovelace, Lady, 113 

MACHEATH, the political, 151 
Magistracy, the unpaid, 406 
Maynooth grant, the, 202 
Malmesbur}', the double, 284 
Martial law, 238 
Measures, the dropped, 224 
Melbourne, Lord, 85 
Merc}', capricious exercise of Crown, 

353 
Metaphor, triumphs of, 480 
Micawber, the Protectionist, 200 
Missing political party, the, 269 
Motion, the monster, and what came 

of it, 213 
Mystification, the, 243 

NAME, virtues of a, 263 
Not to do it, how, 519 
Nuisance, street, the great, 536 
— , — , the newest, 523 



INDEX. 



545 



0" 



'CONNELL and the Bourbons 
180 
Operation, a painless, 152 



PACIFICO'S claims, 494 
Paris, the fortifications of, 374 
— , the coup d'etat in, 398 
Parliament, privileges of, 224 
Partition of Great Britain, plan for 

the, 417 
Peace-mongering inconsistencies, 499 
Peel, Sir Robert, 101 

— and the Tories, 143, 144 

— sauce, 153 

— , and the Corn Laws, 156, 157 

— , Sir Robert, and Pickford, 162 

— , will he swear it ? 172 

— , the quadrilles, 183 

— , his portrait gallery, 185 

— , an all-principled man, 205 

— , his devotion to his friends, 206 

Philippe, Louis, 378 

Pig, roast, 414 

Poland avenged, 464 

Postage, the penny, 137 

Prayer, restitution better than, 156 

— , noble, and vulgar thanksgiving, 

322 
Press, the newspaper, 445 
Primogeniture. 504 
Protection and Free Trade, 193 
Punishments, inequality in, 341 



aUEEN, who shall dine with the ? 
128 
— , outrage on, 229 
Quid pro quo, 193 



RABBITS, passage in history of 
the, 497 
Railway management, 475 
Reciprocity and retaliation, 492 
Repeal of the Union, 130 



Republic, Lamartine's, without Re- 
publicans, 392 

Retribution, unprofitable, 160 

Revolution, scarecrow of, 379 

Right place, the man in, at last, 529 

Rivals, the, 461 

Roast Papist, 318 

Robbery, a sine qua non, 194 

Roebuck, Mr., his cure for Ireland, 
125 

— 's Liverpool speech, 272 

Russell, Lord John, 276 

— , downfall of Administration, 239 



SABBATH, bitter observance of 
the, 306 
Sanitary improvement, plan for, 485 
Scotland, moral and social pecu- 
liarities of, 531 
Sheriffs, story of the, 420 
Silence, the portentous, 403 
Sobriety, dangers of, 315 
Stage, the new, 478 
Stealing, danger of little, 343 
Stone-broth, 148 
Stop-gap, the, 277 
Suffrage, universal, 159 
Sultan, a religious, 406 



TABLE-TURNING and table- 
talking, 502 
Tail, end of the, 194 
Tailors, autocrat of all the, 373 
Talking nuisance, the, 226 
Tariff, the, and Income Tax, 160, 161 
Taste, progress in good, 521 
That's not it! 180 
Throne, a stable, 123 
Tory disloyalty, 140, 142 
Treason, law of, 345 
Treating, cure for, 145 
Trials, the year of, 227 
Truth, how to tell the, 460 



NN 



546 



INDEX. 



Tyranny, the, and its dangers to 
Europe, 400 



VERDICTS, dubious, 354 
Virtue, market price of, 482 



WALTER, John, of the < Times,' 

War, the sources of, 510 
Wellington, the Duke of, 108 
— , the Canada Bill, 146 
— standing in his own way, 147 



Wellington, dislike to change, 211 

— at home, 407 

Whewell, Dr., on English, 508 

Whiskey, the Coercion Act, 316 

William IV., 77 

Wit, City, 517 



'OUTH and age, 514 



ZEAL more than discretion, 122, 
357 



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